Waaagh Games
by Baron de Pencier
Summary: On a backwater planet, Orks Freebooters and the Imperial Guard battle over a Titan maintenance facility. The arrival of an envoy of Tzeentch makes everything just a little bit more... interesting. The sequel to 'The Assassin'
1. Katyush and Beyond

This is a sequel to my previous story _The Assassin_. You don't have to read it, but what happens here will make waaaaay more sense if you do. Cheers!

Disclaimer: The Warhammer 40k Universe is the property of Games Workshop.

* * *

It's a bright, sunny morning, the sun still peeking through the thick clouds of smoke drifting off the bomb craters. I'm walking down the ruined hallway, feeling the sun on the back of my neck, the occasional drift of building dust occasionally drifting off the ruined ceiling. I step over a smoking corpse, the head blown off by a sniper's las shot.

"_Note to self: try to avoid getting head shot off."_

Root's voice echoes through my head. The Lord of Change, Greater Daemon of Tzeentch, is currently incarnated as a thin, incandescent haze which hangs around me. I sigh.

"That's tasteless, i. Sensible, sure, but tasteless."

I use his real name, albeit sarcastically. His amusement bubbles through my mind, but is suddenly replaced by a note of warning. I rock backwards slightly, a high-energy las bolt cracking inches away from my nose. I notice the soldiers huddled behind a makeshift sandbag barrier, and feel my face automatically dropping into the hard mask that is the Colonel. The nearest soldier, his face carved with several symbols of Chaos, looks at me pleadingly. He speaks, and his voice is hoarse.

"Colonel Iortatr! Sir! Please, we've been pinned down, sir! If you could do anything about that sniper, we-"

I smile grimly.

"Have no fear, soldier. The glory of Chaos is on your side."

I raise a hand, Root marshalling huge reservoirs of internal energy.

"Bolt of Change!"

With a shriek of power, the building the sniper is taking refuge suddenly sprouts huge crystalline spires, before melting into a steaming pile. The soldiers are awestruck.

"Praise the Dark Ones! Thank you, Colonel!"

I give him a cold nod, sweeping onwards. I'm walking into the less badly damaged portions of the former Governor's Palace. There's the occasional shell hole, but so far the Chaotic defenders have managed to keep the worst of the heavy firepower away. Even so, they're still going to lose. Just as planned. I reach the inner sanctum, cold hardwood flooring giving way to plush carpeting. The walls have been painted with intricate markings, defacing the former portraits of Imperial saints and heroes. I come to the room of the Black Bishop, the door guards letting me in unquestioningly. I'm the only person to enter the room in the past 24 hours. The defenders believe the Bishop has been evacuated to his mountain fastness. His corpse lies in the corner, an illusion spell making it look like an absolutely stunning vase full of flowers. I settle into the Bishop's chair, catching a glimpse of Iortatr's harsh features in the shiny hardwood surface of the table.

"Bugger. It's gonna be nice to look like me again."

"_I dunno. The fascist dictatorial look suits you. I'm sure that hooked nose would be all the rage in the Eye of Terror."_

"Ha. Ha. Ha. Hilarious. Now, are all the charges se-"

The door creaks open and a guard bursts in, a frantic expression on his face. Through the open door, I can hear the sound of tanks moving.

"Sir, they've broken through our final perimeter! Wha-"

My left eye blazes red, the power of the Red Lamp of Death surging through it.

"Go die a heroes' death."

The man turns 180 degrees, his mind sandblasted clean, neural patterns completely rewoven.

"Yes, my lord."

As the door closes behind him, I hear his voice rise to a triumphal shout.

"Come on lads! Charge! For Chaos! For the Black Bishop!"

I settle back in the chair, rubbing my eye.

"Quick thinking, Root. Now, the charges?"

"_Checking… Oh yep. Everything primed. I'm activating them now. We have three minutes."_

I grin. I'm not what you'd call bloodthirsty, but this is going to be interesting. For the past year, I've been teleporting high-explosive canisters into the substrate of the city. Every square meter has a single shell, many of them magical duplicates. They are all active, timed rune charges ready to send the entire city sky-high. I begin to cast the gate runes, a shining portal to the warp open in the far wall.

"Let's get the hell out of here!"

I sprint to the gate, feeling the buildup of explosive potential energy. With a flash of light, I'm through, feeling a low concussive noise seconds before the gate closes. I can see the explosion, broadcast by scrying directly into my mind. Twenty square kilometers of city rise up off the ground on a cloud of flame, instantly obliterating all life in the area. The explosion is visible from orbit, and the dust cloud permanently alters the planet's climate. A job well done.

_I'd like to explain here. What you're seeing is a recording, essentially, of Sebell Vivat's mind. He was… is, rather, an Eye of Tzeentch. The events that I've include here have been deemed important enough in the grand scale of things that they were deserving of a record, and I, being close to Sebell, was naturally chosen to edit these records. I'll be interjecting with a few comments of my own, and I'll include separate documents, mainly the mental recordings of others present, to add a little background and fill in the details. If you notice a certain resemblance to the style of the memoirs of one Imperial commissar, well screw you. I'm not an author, so I'm borrowing a few recording techniques. Let's keep going._

I'm back in my office at Tzeentch HQ. It looks like a simple room, with luxurious clean lines and a wall of bay windows looking out on an underwater seascape. None of it is real, of course. I'm actually in a stable Warp bubble, the chaotic matter of the Immaterium altered to take on a state which the humans of the Eyes of Tzeentch can withstand. I stretch, taking off the heavy officer's coat that was so distinctly Iortatr. Walking to a mirror on the wall, I prepare simple a appearance-altering spell and sigh contentedly as Iortatr's pale skin darkens to the deep brown I associate more with Sebell Vivat. The spells to change the underlying bone structure will take longer, but I'm in no rush.

"_Nice to be in your own skin again?"_

"Oh yes. And now, we enjoy some break time."

_Root here, with a little explanation The Eyes of Tzeenth dispense rewards based on the amount of time and effort spent on a mission, as well as how well said missions are accomplished. After around a month's break when we returned from Namaskar, we'd been sent to build up and then cripple the Church of the Black Bishop on Vermile. With the heart of the Vermillien rebellion crushed, we were safe to return. We'd been there almost seven years, and, obviously, were awaiting a long break._

I AM AFRAID NOT, VIVAT.

The voice came from everywhere; it was Control, the daemon who acted as the central information relay hub for the Eyes. His essence was essentially interwoven into HQ, meaning that he literally was the HQ.

"The hell not? I've been out there for seven years, all goals accomplished! The rebellion's dead! Just as planned!"

UNDOUBTEDLY. HOWEVER, EVENTS WE WERE UNABLE TO FORESEE HAVE ARRIVED. THE REST OF THE EYES ARE OCCUPIED.

"So time-shift someone! Surely you can find someone who isn't off the job!"

THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE, VIVAT. WE HAVE RECEIVED A QUANTUM WAVEFORM FROM THE BUREAU OF TIME. THEY HAVE MANAGED TO NEVER EXIST AGAIN. THEY MAY BE SOME TIME IN SOLVING THE PARADOX WHICH HAS UNMADE THEM. THE PREPARATIONS FOR THE BLACK CRUSADE ARE STRAINING OUR RESOURCES AS IT IS.

I slumped into my seat angrily, Root flaring around me.

"Tzeentch, not _Failbaddon_! I mean, really? Another crusade? We know it's gonna fail! It's part of the plan! Can't we take someone else off duty? C'mon, man!"

MY ORDERS COME DIRECTLY FROM TZEENTCH. YOU ARE TO TRAVEL TO SANGUIN PYROS, IN THE SANGUIN SYSTEM. AN ORK WAAAGH LED BY A FREEBOOTER NAMED MORDAKKA IS ATTACKING A MECHANICUS TITAN MAINTENANCE STATION THERE. THE WAAAGH IS HEAVILY OUTGUNNED, AND MUST SUCCEED.

I was interested.

"Shazo Mordakka? The Ork from Namaskar?"

CORRECT.

"So why do we want him to win?"

A window opened in the air in front of my head, filling with information.

THE MECHANICUS IS EXPANDING THEIR FACILITY THERE. IT RESTS ON TOP OF A BURIED STC DATABASE WHICH CONTAINS DATA ON A HIGHLY STABLE FORM OF PLASMA CANNON TECHNOLOGY. IF THEY GET HOLD OF THIS TECH, THE IMPERIAL WAR EFFORT WILL BE GREATLY STRENGTHENED. THIS MUST NOT HAPPEN. HELP MORDAKKA'S WAAAGH DESTROY THE IMPERIALS AT ANY COST. SHOULD YOU ACCEPT, WE WILL EQUIP YOU AND SEND YOU OFF IMMEDIATELY. DO YOU?

I nodded slowly.

"A Waaagh!, eh? I'm in."

Without warning, the space around me shifts. The walls drop away, replaced by the shelves and gun racks of the armoury. My clothing changes too; gone is the heavily starched uniform that I've been wearing for the past seven years. It is replaced by light suit of flexible flak armour, carved with arcane runes for extra protection; over that goes a long hooded coat, proudly emblazoned with the pentagram-pupil-ed eye that is my insignia, and the three pips that mark my rank.

_The Eyes mark the power of a sorcerer in a manner similar to the Imperium; one pip is around Beta-level on their scale. It goes all the way up to nine. Magnus the Red is a five. So, yeah. Sebell at that point was pretty powerful, thanks mostly to me._

WE ARE EQUIPPING YOU WITH THE STANDARD FIELD GEAR, IN ADDITION TO YOUR DESIGNATED SET OF PROTEUS ARMOUR.

A small table rises from the floor; on it are three bluish metal rings, two snap shut around my wrists, the intricate black lines covering them shifting as they align with Root's power source. The third ring closes around my neck, and I shudder slightly as the machine interfaces with my mind.

_The Proteus Armour was a project that Sebell and the rest of the mechanically-minded Eyes had been working on. It was designed as the most versatile armour ever; composed entirely of warp matter and Obliterator virus-treated nanomachines, the armour could assume the function of almost anything just by absorbing materials from the surrounding environment. The only downside was that they didn't give you any kind of protection when deactivated, and they required that the user be a__ daemonhost__ for power._

YOU ARE BEING ASSIGNED A TACTICAL ASSISTANCE CHIMERA. IT WILL BE PREPPED SOON.

"I thought you said that all our resources were being used? Why am I being given all this stuff?"

THIS PARTICULAR UNIT WAS RECENTLY DESTROYED. WE HAVE JUST FINISHED RECONSTITUTING IT. IN ADDITION, YOU ARE BEING SENT WITH MINIMAL SUPPORT TO A FULL WAR ZONE, AND WE HAVE NO DESIRE TO LOSE YOU.

"But a TAchimera? Is that really necessary?"

IN A WORD, YES. YOUR BRIEFING WILL NOW CONTINUE. MORDAKKA'S PIRATE GANG ATTACKED SANGUIN PYROS APPROXIMATELY ONE MONTH AGO. THEIR SHIP WAS SUCCESSFUL IN DISABLING MOST OF THE PLANET'S ORBITAL DEFENCES, BUT UPON LANDING THEY FOUND THAT, IN ADDITION TO THE CONSIDERABLE SKITARII FORCE ALREADY ASSEMBLED TO DEFEND THE TITAN MAINTENANCE STATION, AN IMPERIAL GUARD UNIT WAS ALREADY THERE. THE 215TH EDELWEISS MANAGED TO PIN MORDAKKA'S FORCES DOWN, AND IS BEING SUPPORTED BY THE THREE ACTIVE TITANS THERE. IT IS A STALEMATE, ALTHOUGH THE ODDS ARE IN THE IMPERIUM'S FAVOUR. YOUR TASK IS TO MAKE THE ORKS WIN, BY ANY MEANS. HOWEVER, DO NOT DESTROY THE PLANET. I CANNOT STRESS THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS.

"I know, I know. We've gone over this before. I'm not bringing along any apocalypse spells. I just want to get this over with."

IN ADDITION, TZEENTCH HAS REQUESTED YOU BRING ALONG A RETINUE OF AT LEAST TWO MORE PEOPLE. I AM NOT ENTIRELY SURE WHY.

"Self-defence I suppose?"

THAT WOULD STRIKE ME AS LOGICAL. I HAVE RECEIVED COORDINATES FOR TWO INDIVIDUALS WHO HAVE WORKED FOR YOU IN THE PAST.

"_Let me guess… they're both Katyushans. One of them is a former triarch, the other was a Guardsman. They're pretty much the only people we've ever had as a retinue."_

CORRECT.

I smile. It would be good to see the old crowd again. Behind me, someone clears their throat. I turn, to see the boxy, spiderlike shape of a TAchimera behind me. It gives a cheery little wave.

"Tactical Assistance Chimera unit nine reporting, Mister Vivat! It's a real pleasure!"

_Again, me explaining. The Tactical Assistance Chimeras were an offshoot of Abaddon's Defiler project; instead of heavy war machines, many sorcerers wanted a versatile combat platform which was capable of coherent, intelligent thought, and which could operate independently in hostile situations. The end result was the TAchimeras; a scaled-down version of the defiler chassis, powered by the mummified body of a mid-level sorcerer. Only one run of twelve were built, and the minds of the controllers were linked together. Unfortunately, the resulting gestalt had a playful, childlike personality, which was the exact opposite of what Abaddon wanted. The project was put on indefinite hold, and the twelve were assigned to us._

I look over the chimera's black and gold shell.

"Unit Nine, what are your armaments?"

The main eye rolls around, apparently the equivalent of a pensive gesture. It's not so much an eye as a globular glass bubble, with three tiny points of light dancing through the haze inside. Its front pincers whir slowly in a circle.

"Well… I've got all your basic spellcasting abilities, an Obliterator weapon mount capable of becoming a wide variety of heavy weapons, and two grapnel launchers. Is that okay, Mister Vivat?"

WE DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS. VIVAT, i, UNIT NINE, YOU MUST LEAVE AT ONCE.

"Oh boy! Really!? This is so exciting!"

I sigh, turning away from the excitable machine. Ahead of me, a warp gate opens, leading onto a dimly lit alleyway. I cast a quick appearance spell, and within a few seconds I look and sound like an Ecclesiarchy missionary; fat, with clammy-looking skin and pale milky grey eyes.

"TAchimera, cloak yourself, and stay out of trouble."

It fades into the background.

"Done and done, Mister Vivat! You won't even-"

JUST GET MOVING. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE.

Without another word, I step through the portal, the clawed feet clicking softly on the ferrocrete ground behind me. The Proteus armour informs me that we're in the city of Tsiolkovsky, on Katyush. As the portal closes, I look around, taking stock of my surroundings. At the end of the alleyway is an open concourse, lined with trees. Around three stories up is a wide, translucent ceiling, dotted here and there with ventilation fans. We're underground. It's colder than I'm used to, but not unpleasantly so. I start down the alley, and emerge onto the wide street. It could be in any large subterranean city; well-maintained, bustling with crowds of people. The style seems to be subdued, with a focus on blues and grays, but I can see others in Imperial robes. I won't stand out at all. The armour gives the mental equivalent of a beep, and my mind begins to fill with information. I'm heading to a tavern down the street. The sign, written in both Gothic and the blocky Katyushan script, reads 'The Evening Star'.

"_So he runs a tavern now? Somehow I'm not surprised."_

"Keep it down," I whisper under my breath, "You don't know who here could be a psyker."

I open the door, and the bustle of the pub softens slightly before resuming its normal level. It seems to be a fairly nice place, probably catering to the middle classes; low-ranking officers, plant supervisors, minor officials and the like. I move to the bar, sitting down at an empty stool. I can see Irohov at the end of the bar, and try to resist an urge to grin. He hasn't changed much, although it is odd seeing him in civilian clothing. I wave him over.

"What can I get for you, Comrade? We just got in a particularly good shipment of Smirniv ice wine, I'd highly recommend it."

I lean forwards over the counter, face serious.

"I'm looking for information. On business with the Ecclesiarchy."

He arches an eyebrow, apparently noticing my illusionary vestments for the first time.

"Why of course, Father. The citizens of Katyush are always ready to help a newcomer to their world. Am I correct in assuming that?"

My priestly voice rasps uncomfortably as I speak.

"Do you know anyone by the name of Sebell Vivat?"

To his credit, he doesn't freeze up or act at all shocked. Instead, he hands me a mug of cheap beer and leaves. As he goes, I catch a soft whisper.

"The back room. Five minutes."

I grin. Things are getting interesting.

Five minutes later, I finish my beer. Placing the mug on the counter, I circle around the bar and enter the back room. I lock the door behind me. It's dark, and before my eyes can adjust a silenced autogun bullet punches through the air where my head was a millisecond ago. The Proteus armour has reacted automatically, generating a simple illusion spell and teleporting me out of harm's way. Irohov kicks the corpse on the ground with his boot, and grunts as it dissolves into motes of dust. His gun drops to his side.

"So. I assume you're with the Inquisition. I'd like you to know that while you were making the foolish mistake of waiting, I called in a few favours. Katyushan gangs aren't large, but they are well armed. If I'm going to die, I'm taking you with me."

He raises his other hand. There's a small metallic device clutched firmly in his palm.

"Dead-man switch. Like I said, I'm dying on my own terms."

I grin. Wow. He's still on the ball, all right. I wave my hand, and Irohov's pistol and detonator drip from his hands, transmuted into water. I guffaw, stepping out of the shadows and letting my disguise drop.

"You clever bastard. You almost had me for a minute. If I were who I think you thought I was, then you'd have beaten me."

He looks confused.

"Who-?"

Root laughs too, his hazy form glowing slightly.

"_Good to see you too, Ivan Zulonovich Irohov, formerly of the Katyushan 13__th__ Sputnik Guard."_

Before I can react, his fist is within centimeters of my face, straining against an invisible barrier of energy.

"Vivat? You idiot! _Apoli!_ You could have told me you were coming! I told the gangers to kill the guy in the robe!"

"_Oh."_

There's a crash from behind us, followed by loud voices shouting in Katyushan. I sigh.

"Root, give me a time-slice, please?"

The room blurs slightly, the light taking on a strange turquoise hue. Though it's still dark, for whatever reason I can see perfectly. Dust motes hang suspended in midair. Irohov starts, looking around.

"What did you do? What's a time-slice?"

"_I've accelerated the flow of time for us. We have all the time in the world."_

"Here, Irohov. Let's move into the bar. I have a proposal for you."

I unlock the door, walking calmly out into the bar. It's like a tableau; some sort of weird wax sculpture. The residents of the bar are cowered against the walls, hands in the air, while the center of the room is dominated by about a dozen heavily armed gangers wearing drab maroon work suits. I step by an immobile bar boy, noting with detached curiosity the half-full mug which has fallen from his hand and is slowly drifting towards the floor.

"Try not to touch anything that's either alive or moving."

I take a seat on a barstool, motioning for Irohov to sit. He settles uncomfortably onto a stool, trying to resettle the civilian clothes that look slightly ill-fitting on him.

"What's this proposal, then?"

_Cutting out stuff you've already heard, here. Sebell doing the mission briefing, yadda yadda yadda._

Irohov leans back.

"Interesting. Very interesting. So Mordakka's in desperate states, eh?"

I nod.

"That's pretty much it."

"And you're still not really sure why I'm supposed to come along?"

"Nope. It probably has something to do with some grand scheme of Tzeentch's."

He frowns.

"I'm in."

I'm caught by surprise.

"What? You're agreeing to this? I expected you to say no! Why would you associate with Chaos again?"

Coutning on his fingers, he explains.

"One, my bar is filled with armed men. Two, close investigation will reveal that most of the structural supports of the building are wrapped in remote-detonated plastic explosives. Three, I have no interest in opposing the whims of Chaos. Four, I want to see how my former subordinate is doing. Did your briefing mention anything about Rojo?"

I shake my head.

"Oddly enough, no. But-"

"_Malfunction! The armour is overloading!"_

A blue spark drifts lazily off my right wrist. Without any further warning, realtime reasserts itself. Surprised by the sudden appearance of two people where before there were none, the gangers open fire. Irohov dives behind the bar, but I throw myself forward, hands glowing with energy. The armour holds just long enough to deflect the incoming bullets as I let loose a volley of stun spells. The Flares stun everyone except Irohov and I. I pull him to his feet, leading him by one arm towards the door. This wasn't how I planned things.

"We're going!"

He resists.

"Wait! Let me get my gear!"

"_You have about three minutes before the Arbites get here. I've restabilized the armour's sensors, and they're on their way."_

"All right. TAchimera!"

The machine rematerializes outside the window, giving another cheery wave. Irohov looks like he's about to say something, but runs into the back room instead.

"What do you need, Mister Vivat?!"

"Set up a smokescreen, cut the power. Nonlethals only. We need to delay the Arbites."

"Sure thing!"

It turns to the crowd that has surrounded the bar. The lump of silvery metal on the underside of its faceplate shifts, becoming a wide-barreled cluster grenade launcher. With a low _bloop_, it launches several canisters of tear gas into the crowd. At the same time, one of the grapnel launchers on its abdomen launches a spiked chain towards the ceiling. It hits something fragile, and with a crackle all the lights on the block shut down. There is utter chaos in the street.

"Boo! I'm a scary monster! Everyone panic! Blaaaaargh!"

"TAchimera! Cut the theatrics!"

"Oh… okay Mister Vivat."

Irohov bursts out of the back room, now dressed in a Katyushan uniform, weapons and gear slung over his back.

"Let's go!"

We jog quickly out the door, into the area that the TAchimera has cleared. The only light is the dim bluish glow from the ceiling. The skylights seem to be covered in snow. My eyes sting from the unpleasant gasses, but I ignore the irritation. I begin the incantations for the portal which will take us to our next destination. It's a simple spell, but the noise is making it hard to concentrate. Irohov has pulled out what I know as a _Strela_ rifle, and is leveling it into the smoke. He is weeping from the teargas, his nose dripping uncontrollably. Something bumps my shoulder, and I turn, panicked, a blast of magic surging from my forehead and nearly ripping the panicked civilian in half. His corpse falls limply to the ground, and I turn back to the spell, swearing mentally. Finally, the warp gate opens, leading on to a barren mountainside.

"Come on!"

We step through, the TAchimera covering our escape with a final volley of stinging smoke.

_I'm going to add in a brief interlude. This next bit is taken from the memories of one Stig Halvint, a menial at the Progenium school on Augusta._

Θ

Stig Halvint sighed, shuffling the dullish red robes he wore around himself. Another long day. He'd be home soon, thank the Emperor, drawn up by the heaters and out of this bloody weather. A small drop of condensation fell from the tip of his stubby nose. Being a day-monitor, even one for an institution as prestigious as Augusta's school was thankless work. The children were all outside, taking the mandatory fifteen-minute fresh-air break between classes. In a normal situation, constant monitoring by burly men like Stig wouldn't have been necessary, but when the students you were surveying took classes in close-quarters combat and sharpshooting you couldn't be too careful. Bloody hell, he hated his Emperor-forsaken job.

His miserable internal monologue was interrupted by raucous laughter from across the courtyard. It was DuPree again, the little bastard. DuPree the General's son, apple of his bloody father's eye. He was a bully of the worst kind, but no-one was in any mood to deal with it. The students would have to cope for themselves. Halvint noticed the object of his taunts; Leman again. The frail, slight girl was relatively new to the school, and didn't seem to live up to her father's name. Aron Leman was an Augustan war hero, and the whole planet had had a day of mourning when it was announced he had been killed in the last Chaotic raid. He'd been found dead, laspistol still clutched in his hand, defending his daughter from two rogue psykers.

To his surprise, the normally silent girl was speaking back to DuPree. Her voice, though soft, echoed around the subdued courtyard with surprising force.

"You say that the Living Saints are a myth?"

DuPree gave what seemed to be an affirmative. Before Halvint could react, Leman had jumped on him. It took three other monitors to pry the furious child off of the older boy. The Medicae said he might never see again. Emil Leman was five years old.

Θ

We come out of the portal onto barren, mountainous terrain. The clouds are red, the sky is red, the two dim suns are red, and the soil is red. There's a faint smell of ozone in the air.

"_This is… why are we on a daemon world?"_

_

* * *

_

I was aiming for a completely different style than the previous work; in addition, this is going to be significantly more complicated and darker.

Thoughts? Constructive criticism is always welcome! Feel free to make anonymous reviews!


	2. The Guns of Pyros

I turn, taking in the red hillside.

"No sign of life. I'm not sure if that's good or bad."

Irohov shoulders his rifle.

"I don't like this, Vivat. I don't like this at all. This is where Azul's supposed to be?"

I shrug.

"Yep. Tzeentch works in mysterious ways. Say, Root, how's the armour coming?"

I look down at my wrists, watching the intricate patterns in the metal shifting and reorienting. With a sudden click, the patterns flare blue, before dissolving back into the shiny metallic surface.

"_Just a simple temporal binding error. It's fixed, and I've logged it in the bug records. Wanna try a sweep?"_

I nod, focusing my mind. The armour melts over my right hand, covering it in a reflective bluish glove. I spread my fingers, digging them into the slightly gritty red soil. My mind comes alight with images, registers of geological density, and, above all, the signature of minds. I cannot enter or read them, thanks to my poor psychic skills and Root's inability to use telepathy, but I know they are there. There are two nearby, over the next hill…

I stand up, pointing as the Proteus armour reconfigures to its normal shape.

"Over that hill. There's two of them, and they're fighting. I'm fairly sure they're both human, but with all the warp energy here it's hard to tell."

Irohov nods, cocking the _Strela_.

"Right."

We set off at a brisk pace, and as we move, I glance back at the machine following us.

"TAchimera, you are authorized to use lethal force. Prepare for anti-infantry/daemon combat if necessary."

"Hooray! Assault cannon engaged!"

Its pincers suddenly flare with an aura of orange light. Its weapon mount changes to the correct form. My attention is brought back to the task at hand by the sound of metal striking metal, and we come over the top of the hill to find a scene of nearly-finished combat spread below us. We are looking down on a flattened depression in the mountainside, littered with corpses. They carry primitive hand weapons, and are wearing the primitive rags that mark them as feudal Chaotic tribesmen. Only one of them is left alive, and she is engaged in brutal hand-to hand combat with a figure in gore-stained power armour. Her opponent is unarmed, seeming to favour brutal swings of his metal-encased fists. She ducks under a blow, bringing up two wickedly curved knives and landing a wicked strike across the faceplate of the armour. He staggers back, uninjured but apparently somewhat stunned by the force behind the blow. Long black hair streaming around her, she throws back her head, screaming the words to some foul prayer to the dark gods, and her two knives crackle with violet lightning. She rushes forward, preparing for a killing blow, when her head is separated from her shoulders. The armoured figure sweeps his semicircular chainblade, apparently some sort of scaled-up trench knife, back into a hip sheath hidden under the odd dresslike tabard that encircles his armoured waste. I glance at Irohov. The whole thing has taken less than a minute.

"Was that…?"

He nods, grimly, and shoulders the rifle, drawing a bead on the figure, who seems to have noticed us. He is walking towards us, and I am struck by the odd design of his armour; hugely oversized feet, legs, and hips, with a thin waist and a short cape that encircles his shoulders. I raise my hands, arcs of energy dancing between my fingers.

"Who are you?! Identify yourself!"

The warrior chuckles, the first sound I've heard him make. His voice is distorted by the armour, and there is an odd raspy note to it.

"A servant of the God-Emperor of Mankind, heretic."

For the first time, I notice that the armour, under the layer of gore, is inscribed with prayers and religious symbols. Then, my eye is caught by the glimpse of gold on the mountainside behind the figure, and I see the golden Aquila planted on a pole at the mouth of a cave. But the figure is taking off his helmet. A hand rises to her temple in a crisp salute.

"Triarch. Vivat. It is a pleasure to see you again."

Azul Osavin speaks, her pale face shadowed by the long bangs. Her hair is still drawn into its graceful topknot, and she doesn't look like she's changed a bit. Except her eyes. It's the first time I've seen them. They aren't human. They're bloodshot, with blood-red irises. Instead of a pupil, there are three black lines, with three dots in between them and a single tiny one in the center. She is undoubtedly still a daemonhost. I give a friendly nod.

"And how is Nnoitra doing?"

She shudders slightly, and when she speaks next, the metallic rasp in her voice is more prominent.

"He is… fine."

There's an awkward silence. Irohov lowers his _Strela_, smiling hesitantly. The TAchimera's assault cannon disappears, and the weaponized magics it has readied fade away. Irohov breaks the silence.

"Where's Rojo? Is he around somewhere? I'd very much like to say hello to him again."

A hateful grimace twists Azul's face.

"He's gone."

Irohov is about to say something, but he stops himself. There is another long silence. A low wind stirs up a haze of reddish dust. I can hear flies buzzing around the corpses.

"We-"

"I know. You want my help. Something to do with Mordakka?"

"Um. Yes, actually. How-?"

She taps her temple, and shudders again. The rasp is back.

"You could say I'm close to the Warp."

I'm not entirely sure how to respond.

"_Well then. I think it's worth taking stock of what we have. Irohov, I'm gonna guess you've got everything you need?"_

He nods.

"I was prepared for the worst. Figured it was only a matter of time before the Inquisitors found me, so I prepared."

He pulls back his shoulder-cape, revealing several dozen metallic capsules strapped to the inside.

"_Black Promethium satchel charges?"_

He nods.

"_Ah, incendiaries. What fun. Now, Azul?"_

She spreads her arms, empty-handed.

"I only have Nnoitra."

Her arms don't move. The two chain-knives spring from their holsters, settling into her hands faster than the eye can follow. She turns the broad ends towards me, and I can see that each is carved with an eye, bearing the same mutated iris that she has. I can tell they are merely carved metal, but there is a horrible mocking intelligence about them. I bow.

"Nnoitra. It is a pleasure to have the forces of Khorne on our side."

Azul's eyes twitch.

"Likewise, Sorceror."

The voice sounds more like two sheets of metal being scraped together than anything human. Nnoitra is speaking.

She resheaths the blades.

"We should be moving, heretic. The light of the Emperor waits for no man. Open your portal, that we may get into combat."

Reacting automatically, I cast the gate runes. Through it, I see another hillside, although the soil on it is brown and sun-parched, rather than bloody.

"_Everyone ready? Let's go then."_

We step through, into complete chaos. We seem to have arrived in the midst of a pitched battle. All around us, Ork gunners and meks are tending to immense wide-barreled siege cannons, which are rapid-firing shells down the hill and over the thick wall of debris at it's base. The hill is more of a low plateau than anything else; the Orks have modified it into a natural bastion. Behind us, the ramshackle bulk of an Ork ship, resting on massive legs, blots out the sun. Its guns are silent, but the shimmering haze that surrounds the plateau is enough to indicate that its void shields are active. Down part of the hillside is a large rocky promontory, surrounded by a dark green mob which looks to be Imperial guardsmen. Judging by the frantic way they are trying to scale it, it seems to be the only way onto the plateau. At the very end of the promontory I see a massive, hulking figure, cutting into the crowd below with huge curtains of red-orange energy. I point at him, turning to the others.

"That's Mordakka! Let's go say hi!"

Θ

_Maréchal_ Louis Berthier of the Edelweiss 215th scanned the hillside with his scope, taking in the considerable enemy resistance.

"Caporal, une message pour Capitaine de Pencier. Il doit avancer ses armes lourdes pour supporter les Tonneureurs de Capitaine d'Obélisk.`

The vox operator nodded, turning to his set and broadcasting in stacatto Edelweiss. Berthier watched as de Pencier's heavy weapons swung forward, supporting the precisely ordered squares of the advancing infantry and Thunderers. The Greenskins would soon face the devastating force that was the 215th _Garde Moyen_.

Θ

The Orks don't notice us as we work our way towards Mordakka. They're all occupied, sending streams of ordinance down the hill towards the Imperials. The humans have opened up, and heavy-calibre Thunderer shells leave rippling waves in the Orkish shield. No-one is charging, though; the Orks have the humans pinned under the volume of their weaponry, and seem content to just shoot them. Pointing in the general direction of the Imperials, I glance at Irohov.

"The 215th! Any idea who they are?" I have to shout over the sound of the weapons firing all around us.

"They're close-range specialists; heavy carapace armour on all of their infantry. Ridiculously disciplined." He yells back as we duck around a clanking piece of unidentifiable machinery.

"_D'you have any problems shooting at Imperials?"_

He shakes his head.

"Not the Edelweiss. There's some bad blood between them and us. Stuck-up bastards."

We near the promontory, and, consequently, the edge of the shield. I can see ripples of red light dancing over the shield, each hit accompanied by a distinctive click-boom. The Edelweiss infantry, crouched behind mobile mantlet shielding, are firing odd, staff-like weapons at the shield. They fire dull cones of red energy, instead of the pinpoint beams I'd normally associate with las weaponry.

"What the hell are those guns?"

"I'm not sure. Some kind of close-range las-shotgun. All their infantry use 'em. Can't tell you more than that."

We're out on to the promontory. Around us, heavily armoured Ork nobs rain death on the Imperials. Mordakka is partially hidden by a thick mob of gunners, but I can hear his war cries.

"DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA! DIE, HUMIES! I'S GOT TWENNY-TOO BARRELS A' DEFF FER YAZ! HAHHAHA!"

I inhale deeply.

"MORDAKKA!"

The psychically-enhanced shout is audible to everyone around. Within half a second, there are several hundred Ork weapons pointed at us. I raise my hands in surrender, noting out of the corner of my eye that Irohov, Azul and the TAchimera are doing likewise. The Orks have stopped firing at the enemy entirely. Mordakka shoulders his way through the throng of yelling Greenskins. Aside from thicker armour and an extra gun on one shoulder, he hasn't really changed much.

"Humies? In me fortriss? Zoggit... 'old on. You is... no, it can' be? Youse is Vivat!"

_I'm still not sure why everyone managed to recognise us, given that Sebell literally didn't look like the same person anymore, and no-one saw his face for that long on Namaksar. We may never know._

I shrug.

"We're here to help you, Mordakka."

There is a long pause. The gunfire from outside continues unabated, though.

"Worl... yeh. All right. Welcome ta me Waaa-"

The world goes white, and a moment later a thunderous clap of sound and heat washes over us. All our eyes, Ork, human and machine alike, follow the trail of superheated air back to...

"Zog. One of da Titan's is 'ere."

Mordakka looks around.

"Why isn't yez fightan, boyz? C'mon den! DAKKA ALREADY!"

The Orks turn back to firing, and their Boss pulls a crudely-constructed shortwave vox off a pocket in his armour.

"Tezla! Get yer stumps movin'! Dere's a Titan 'ere!"

Apparently satisfied by the unintelligible reply, Mordakka looks over the Boyz again, guns at his sides.

"Yew lot! Move tad a side! S'time fer shokkins!"

On his command, the Orks move closer to the hillside, leaving a clear path down the middle. A barrel-chested Nob throws his head back and shouts,

"SHOKKIN' TIME!"

All along the Ork defence, the guns fall silent. The Imperials, unsure how to react, do likewise. The battlefield is eerily quiet. Then... footsteps. Heavy and clanking, they are coming closer. A huge Ork, covered in crude cloth armour, stomps into view. His full-body suit of patched canvas is held together by crude rivets, which dance with electricity. Immense sparks play between the metal antennae on his back, and as he comes closer I can feel my hair standing on end. In his gloved hands he holds an immense wand-like weapon, the air around it suffused with electrical energy. He clumps past, breathing heavily, then reached the edge of the promontory and leaps off the rocky cliffs.

Θ

Trooper Jean Impérien huddled against the mantlet, frantically loading his _halleberde_, ejecting the depleted battery and slotting a fresh one in to the stubby body of the weapon's las emitter. He rolled forwards onto his stomach, pushing the tip of the polearm through a slot in the mantlet, and squeezing the firing lever. With a resonant boom, the weapons discharged its entire battery pack in a searing burst of energy. Impérien didn't bother to check if he had hit something. He pulled his weapons back through the slot, steeling it beside him.

"Merde."

The top half of the mantlet had been blown off, taking his fellow _Gardes Moyen_ with it. He was stuck alone, in pathetic cover. The advance had gone well, but the xenos had overwhelmed them. Still, he thought proudly. They had not taken one step back.

"La Guarde meurte, elle ne retraite pas!"

_Oddly enough, this was an actual saying in the Edelweiss armed forces at the time. Though they normally had a reputation as a pretty rowdy bunch, when it came to military discipline they were only topped by the Mordians._

The popular, if grim, Edelweiss saying was comforting to a degree. Impérien knew that no Edelweiss soldier worth his salt would ever retreat unless ordered to do so. There would always be someone to back him up. Still. He was in a bad state, and no mistake.

BOOM

He was pushed into the dirt by the shockwave from the Titan's immense plasma cannon.

"Mon dieu! Un Titan! Nous sommes sauvées!"

A loud cheer went up along the the Imperial lines. He recognized the sacred war machine as the _Lupus Ferrum_, a Reaver specialising in fire support. It wasn't the biggest machine the Techpriests could muster, but it was comforting nonetheless. Hold on. Something was wrong. The xenos weren't firing! He peeked through the slit in the mantlet. They were behind their barricade, all right; he could see the brutes, but they weren't shooting. He heard shouts in unintelligible Orkish, and saw a flurry of movement along the ridge off to his left. A bulky figure threw itself off the rocky cliffs, landing with an audible _thump_ in the barren land between the Imperials and their enemies. As it hit the ground, the figure plunged some sort of spike into the ground. Just before it punched into the earth, he saw a singly spark fly between it and the ground. His hair stood on end.

Sanguin Pyros was notable for having mineral-rich soil. Extremely high in iron and copper, it was also an excellent electrical conductor. The Ork's weapon had been feeding directly off the main reactor of their cruiser, and when it hit the soil it discharged millions of volts, with a full ampere of current. One tenth of that current flow was enough to kill a human being. In an instant, fully half of the 5000-strong Imperial division was fatally defibrillated. A Thunderer, its interior filled with sparks, detonated with a thunderous roar.

Louis Berthier, safe in his position in an insulated observation tower, felt his jaw drop.

"Oh mon dieu. Retraitez. Retraitez maintenant!"

Stunned, it took a few seconds for the vox operator to comply. In minutes, the Edelweiss were frantically retreating, harried by renewed firing from the Orks. Berthier collapsed into his seat, sweating profusely.

"Mais... merde, qu'est ce qui vient de passer?"

Behind him, a tall figure detached itself from the shadow of the tower's roof. Berthier felt the commissar's breath on his the side of his face. She was uncomfortably close.

"Vous avez perdu, Maréchal."

Emily Leman smiled as Berthier turned.

"C'est horrible! La motité d'une division, completement détruit! Nous sommes finis! "

Leman's smile, marred by the horrible scar that sliced through the left side of her face only grew wider. Her eyes, hidden behind a large set of sunglasses, were unreadable.

"Non. Ce n'est pas la fin. L'Empereur nous guidera vers la victoire. "

Somehow, Berthier found that smile more frightening than any enemy he'd ever faced.

Mordakka turns away from the carnage below, grunting with satisfaction.

"Tezlork may be a git, but 'e knows wot 'e's doin'."

"So you're just going to leave him down there?" I'd never have expected Irohov to be concerned about an Ork, but times have changed.

The Warboss laughs.

"I'd be worryin' more 'bout da humies den 'im. He n' his Shokkaz is dead 'ard."

He waves to a clustered group of Orks, all wearing bright red clothing, bionic legs, and carrying snub-barrelled weapons.

"Montag! Off yez go!"

The Nob in charge of the group nods, yelling orders to the rest of his Boyz. They leap into the air, their legs bouncing them along the rocky terrain with effortless ease. As they drop into the clusters of still-retreating soldiers, I see their weapons spit whirling spheres of white fire.

"If Tezlork 'an is Shokkaz is real 'ard an' real shokky, den Montag an 'is Flamaz is real fast an' real burny."

"_You're pretty well organi-"_

BOOM

The shockwave from the plasma cannon hit doesn't penetrate the shield, but its force still knocks us off balance. Mordakka starts, as if he's realised he's forgotten something.

"Zog. Dere's still a Titan out dere, innit?"

He pulls out his vox again.

"Dakka Kontrol! Oy! Atinboro! Wake up, ya git! We'z got a Titan ta kill!"

The response is a surprisingly high-pitched roar that sounds like "HA-SHAAAGH!"

Above us, two of the ship's massive main turrets begin to rotate.

Θ

"DAMNATION! They refuse to respond to the burning justice of our mighty plasma cannons! Jodie!! Switch gunpods to lascannons! We'll show them the meaning OF LIBERTY!"

Mikael Vills-son, Princeps of the _Lupus Ferrum_, strained against the restraining straps of his command chair. Veins bulged in his temples, and his eyes swung this way and that, gripped in the overwhelming presence of his Titan's mighty machine-spirit.

Moderatus Jodie Sectariat sighed, but obeyed his orders. Mikael was a really nice guy, a strategic mastermind and capable of some of the most incredible feats of Titan control she'd ever seen, but when he was linked in he tended to go... strange. She twisted the weapons selection dials, watching with as the holographic readouts showed the two plasma cannons being substituted for lascannons. The _Lupus Ferrum_ was an odd Reaver variant; it mounted relatively small-calibre weapons, but could switch between them at will during combat, offering a far wider range of tactical load outs. The schematic showed the two circular rails contracting, pulling the deactivated plasma cannons into the bulbous tubes that were the gunpods.

"Lascannons primed. Ready to fire, Princeps."

Θ

"I wants ta do as much damage as possible! Drain power from all systems 'cept da shields. Wot? Den drain da shields, too!"

I didn't notice the noise the ship's void shields were making until it was gone. The low humming faded away, and with it the faint veil of energy that showed the bubbles of defensive energy were active.

"FIYAH!"

Two three-barrelled high-calibre railgun turrets spoke.

Θ

"Prepare to show them the meaning of Imperial Truth! I believe in the justice of Mankind! Fi-"

WHAM.

WHAM.

WHAM.

WHAM.

The titan staggered as four of the six shots fired from the Orkish cruiser hit it, tearing off its left arm and shoulder. Dozens of klaxons went off, and huge sections of the machine's power system overloaded, bursting out coolant pipes throughout its blue-armoured frame.

"RICHART!?"

Moderatus Richart Howke typed frantically, flipping through hundreds of status readouts.

"It doesn't look good, sir. Left arm isn't responding, we've lost all sensors down the left side. Main bus breakers are overcharged... the core's stable, but whatever that was had enough power to punch straight through our void shields. We need to get out of here!"

Vills-son's scowling face grew even angrier, and he began to turn a worrying shade of purple.

"Retreat! NEVER! While there is still a free bone in my body I will never retreat! I believe in the Emperor's justice! I believe in MY OWN JUSTICE!"

Sectariat and Howke shared a glance. Howke nodded imperceptibly.

The titan's main vox squawked.

"_Lupus Ferrum_! Retreat! For the sake of your Titan and the Machine God, pull out now! This is an order!"

Any further messages were cut off as the unit short-circuited. The Princeps took in a deep breath, and launched into another tirade as the remaining gunpod cycled to missile launchers.

"Yes! The enemy will feel the RIGHTEOUS PUNCH OF OUR MIS-"

He collapsed as Sectariat clipped the tranquilizer hypo back onto her belt.

"This party's over, Richart. Let's go."

_Lupus Ferrum_ wheeled, shambling unsteadily back to the Mechanicus facility. The Orks did not fire again.

Θ

We make our way towards the ship. Mordakka calls it the _Kingdakka_, and it's worthy of the title.

Above us looms the immense bulk of what was once an Imperial cruiser. The spined, cathedral-like hull has been completely rebuilt, with immense gun mounts protruding from every open space on the body. Two bulky engines of unidentifiable make have been welded to the sides, and a huge reactor, one which looks to have been directly lifted from an Imperial surface-based power station, has been clumsily bolted onto the hull above the rear engines. The pointed prow now has a hook like bulge added to it, with the recognizable barrels of...

"You mounted that horrific weapon on a _battleship_, xeno? Impossible."

... two Waaaghkannons. Above them is a bulky antennae, similar in shape, if not size to the weapons carried by the Shokkas. I notice that some sort of huge pipelike structure has been attached to the underside of the prow.

"What's that tube thing?"

"Dat fing is Daend's Enda Snipa."

"It's... a gun?"

"Fiyahs Booma shells wif a 'fective range 'a fifty klicks. Pretty accurate, too."

"_You never cease to scare the hell out of and amaze me, Warboss."_

_A brief historical note here; the _Kingdakka_ was, we think, formerly an Imperial cruiser designated the _Glorious Vengeance_. How Mordakka and the Waaagh he collected managed to steal it from dry-dock is a different story entirely._

We near a service elevator, built in to one of the treelike legs that is holding the ship off the ground. Walking underneath its looming bulk, I notice that it's taken a considerable pounding. There are immense gashes and scorch marks in the plates of its skin, and I can see gaping holes where the internal structure of the machine is visible. Sparks pour from a multitude of points on its hull as the Orks, abandoning their combat gear, get back to work on repairing their ship. We pile into the elevator; it's Ork-sized, and looks large enough to carry a tank, so there's no problem of fit, even with the TAchimera. The elevator rises through a space in the interior of one of the landing legs, and as we enter the main hull I can see burst conduits, overloaded interior systems, and cracks lacing the interior walls. Aside from the damage, the ship seems quite clean and well maintained.

"What happened here, Mordakka? I knew that you had a rough re-entry, but this is bad. In sixty years of military service I've never seen something punch through standard-issue adamantium plating that easily!"

"Yeah. We foun' dat dere was more ova defence dan we 'ad expected. Dem machine boyz 'ad a cupple 'a big orbital gunz... We fort we were gunna be safe, but den..."

Θ

The Kingdakka shook with multiple explosions as several missiles impacted against its void shielding. Mordakka was almost thrown out of his command seat, but he regained his composure. His ship was already heavily damaged by the Humies' big guns, and the shielding couldn't take much more.

"Gork n' Mork! What were dose fings?"

One of the Bridge Boyz gave him a panicked look. Mordakka didn't know his name. He was just one of da boyz.

"Boss, dey'z launched fightas n' bommas at us! We'ze getting shot up!"

Mordakka glanced at the Dakka Kontroller.

"Atinbork! Antifgihta defences online! Get da big guns targettin' dem ground blastas!"

The slim ork responded in his usual high-pitched yodel.

"Right on i' Boss!"

Thrwoing levers and pounding buttons, he seized his vox mike, calling to the gunnery centers throughout the ship's body.

"Anti-fightas, shoot 'em already! Big Raildakkas, ready ta fire! Target anti- orbital gunz!"

Mordakka grabbed his seat controls.

"We'ze turnin' ta firin' position, Ladz! Get ready!"

The _Kingdakka_ pitched forwards, bringing its huge upper guns to bear. Smaller railgun turrets across the hull swivelled to match the alignment of the main cannons, targeting one of the four huge las arrays that the Mechanicus had fired at them.

"Daend! Pick anyfing yew want onna ground, 'an kill it!"

The immense ventral gun deployed, swinging downwards and forwards and locking into place below the prow. A huge array of lenses flicked back and forth along a tank-sized scope as Daend found a target.

"Aye hez fehnd an fyooel deeypot, Bozz," the ancient Snipa mumbled, "Reddy hwen hyoo iz."

Mordakka inhaled deeply, relishing the hustle and bustle of battle.

"FIYAH!"

Several dozen railguns opened up, connecting the ship and the ground with a tracery of orange energy. Below, the orbital cannons were smashed to smithereens by high-energy kinetic projectiles. The Enda Snipa spat a single shell, the force of its launch shaking the entire craft. The shell hit something volatile on the ground, and Mordakka was pleased to see hundreds of other sub-explosions light up the Mechanicus facility on his scope. The bombers and fighters, still peppering the ship with their ordinance, were torn apart as the space around the _Kingdakka_ was filled with endless clouds of flak and high-energy plasma bursts.

"Boss! Dere gunz is down!"

Mordakka laughed dementedly.

"Prepare ta land, boyz! We're takin dis fight tad a groun'! WAAAAAAGH!"

The boyz joined him in his war cry as the _Kingdakka_ dropped out of orbit.

Θ

"...An so dat's 'ow we ended up 'ere. Dem Imperialz sent lots 'a attacks against us, but dat last wuz da biggest 'an strongest."

We're sitting in what, oddly enough, seems to be some sort of conference room. There's a wide table, and three of the walls are covered with screens. The fourth wall is missing; it leads directly on to one side of the spacious command bridge. Like the rest of the ship, it seems to be remarkably well-appointed; there are no piles of garbage and damaged machinery, and the only major changes to the interior seem to have been expanding it to fit Orks. When Irohov speaks, I notice he has an unusual gleam in his eye.

"So here, then, is what we know; We're dealing with a large enemy force, you don't have psace capabilities yet, and we don't know the full extent of the enemy's forces."

Azul nods.

"There will be much shedding of blood. Nnoitra can smell it."

The TAchimera waves a hand.

"Ooh! Ooh! I'd like to make a contribution!"

The elderly Katyushan nods.

"Go ahead."

"We have one major tactial advantage, Mister Irohov! Our guns are bigger than theirs! And, knowing that we're in a stationary position considerable semisationary firepower on our hands-"

"The best offence is a ridiculously good defence."

Suddenly I understand why Irohov was in the Katyushan military for sixty years. The gleam in his eye is confidence and intelligence. Perfectly justified confidence, and far, far more strategic intelligence than I'd ever suspected.

Θ

Magos Titanicus Gyth Hethrhodin let out an angry sigh, the ready room's dim light reflecting ominously off her oversized ocular implants.

"You complete fool, Vills-son. You idiot. Thanks to your willingness to stand by and do nothing we've lost against a force we should have been able to crush. No. Don't talk. Don't say anything at all."

The Princeps settled back into his seat, momentarily cowed by the diminutive semimechanical figure with flaming red hair who was glaring at him. Before he could answer, she had turned to one of the other people at the table.

"Maréchal Berthier, I'd like to sincerely apologise for not providing adequate support for your men. Although our Skitarii facilities are... less than adequate at the moment, my men will provide anything you need to get back to operating capacity."

Berthier gave her a polite nod, knowing that she couldn't help him much. The detonation of one of the secondary fuel depots had caused a critical overload in the independent power systems of the Skitarii outposts, and the resultant damage had annihilated at least 80 percent of the Mechanicus military force. Hethrhodin turned to the two other people at the table.

"Princeps, we know now that our enemy has firepower stronger than anything we can muster. What he lacks, however, is numbers and the will of the Machine God. Be careful, be strong. You will receive your orders when we need you. Good hunting."

Princeps Jishin 'Kari of the _Principio Aevangelus_ gave a nodded hesitantly, her slim hands locking even more tightly on the arms of her bone-white seat.

"I won't lose."

Princeps Jahruk Bhachin of the _Apokalypsis Nunc_ gave his trademark charming grin, nodding enthusiastically.

"They can't beat us. It's impossible."

* * *

Thanks to all 3 of you who reviewed! I'm so happy to have a number of fans that can be counted on one hand! (end of sarcasm)

I know there's some French in this chapter, and there will continue to be occasional snipets of French (and _maybe_ Russian), but I'll try to make them decipherable in context. If you really want me to, I'll provide translation...

Anyhow, I got a question in an anonymous review, asking how to write Ork characters...

I'd say just go for it really, but keep a few things in mind; Orks may be stupid, but they aren't _dumb_. They do what they do for a reason. For instance, if an Ork doesn't like someone, he cuts his head off because he doesn't like him, not because he's an Ork and that's the kind of things Orks do. They have to have motivations.

Aside from that, you can really do whatever; Orks are fun, 'cause they're just so wonderfully neurotic you can make just about any character convincingly Orky.

So. What do you think? I'm begging you, review! Ask questions? Tear apart my logic! Make me explain! I want challenging criticism (but praise is fine too.)


	3. Planning, Scheming and Psychosis

Irohov, still grinning with unrestrained enthusiasm, gives a sidelong glance to the equally excited TAchimera.

"You can't perform tactical simulations by any chance, can you?"

The machine bounces excitedly on all four legs, its spiky body almost leaving the ground on each bounce.

"Boy can I, Mister Irohov! But... oh..."

It slumps, eyes flickering back and forth worriedly.

"I'm not equipped for wide-range scanning right now..."

"_Apoli_. You can guess what I was hoping to do... Vivat..."

"Yeah?"

"Those bracelets of yours... they can do scans, right? I saw you."

I flex my left hand, feeling as the mutable metal trickles across my wrist and over my hand.

"Sure. TAchimera, do you need a direct uplink?"

"No siree, Mister Vivat!"

One of its pincers flexes, and for a brief instant there's a thin chain of blue flame connecting our hands. Spreading my fingers wide, I drive the palm of my hand straight down, where it collides with a dull _whunk_ against the deck plating. There's a brief hit of mental information, but I'm distracted as the TAchimera's eyes begin to glow. The smoke-filled spheres seem to burst outwards, filling the room with incorporeal haze. And then... Lines. Thin, vague lines, growing more and more complicated by the second. First there's a flat plane, then... a relief map. The outlines of buildings. What could be... is a ship. The _Kingdakka_. Around it sprout tiny blue dots. Except they're not dots. Each is smaller than a fingernail, yet I can see the individual faces of the Orks as clear as day. It's not just a model. It is what's outside, down to the tiny readouts marking what each Ork is carrying, as well as their mental state, health, and general willingness to fight. Irohov waves his hands in a theatrical gesture, and the view zooms towards the miniature _Kingdakka_. It passes through the walls, and I see... five tiny figures, one of them a mechanical spider, another an Ork, standing around a table. The label next to the one in a blue coat reads 'Awed.'

"Now then, TAchimera," The triarch rubs his hands together in glee, "Let's get to work."

Θ

Louis Berthier broke into a light jog, struggling to keep up with the dynamo that was Magos Hethrhodin. Sweating in the bright light of Pyros' sun, they moved at a brisk trot across the immense courtyard that was the center of the Sanguin Pyros Titan Maintenance Facility. As they passed between two immense hatches in the ground, Berthier was struck by the sheer size of the place. The courtyard itself was at least a square kilometre, large enough for dozens of titans to stand with room to spare. Most of the facility was deep, deep underground, with only the huge ring wall that surrounded the outer hatches to mark that anything was there at all. The walls were titan-sized; in the right weather conditions, they stopped any light from reaching the courtyard at all. Berthier was brought back to the moment by Hethrhodin's staccato chatter.

"So... um. Yeah. We. We've reconstituted what we could from the orbital guns. There was enough spare material to cobble together one of the, um, big guns, but we're still pretty vulnerable to a space attack."

They passed one of the many burnt-out craters that were the remains of Skitarii barracks. Most of the facility aboveground had been levelled by the initial greenskin attack, and the Skitarii and Edelweiss were still being housed underground for safety's sake.

"Magos, why exactly did you want to-"

"Speak with you. Oh, right. We've received word from the Segmentum Command. They're working on getting reinforcements inbound. They're being, um, pretty vague about what they send, but. I think, I think it'll be strong."

Bertheir nodded, satisfied.

"Why wasn't I told when you received the message."

"Oh? I forgot. Yeah."

Berthier was struggling to resist the urge to give Hethrhodin a clout over the head with his carapace-armoured fist when an aide, clad in the white and maroon livery of the Skitarii medicae corps, literally skidded up on wheeled feet.

"Magos! M-Magos! We... need your help!"

Hethrohdin snapped alert.

"What is it?"

The aide, gasping for breath, gave her a frightened look, and gestured over one shoulder to one of the nearby medicae stations.

"One of the Hypaspists... a plasma gunner... is having a critical overload. We've been unable to stabilise him."

"You WHAT?! How could you be so... NO!"

Grabbing the aide bodily, Hethrhodin took off towards the medical hut, her brushed metal feet kicking up sparks from the courtyard floor. Sliding into the hut with a shriek of metal, she shoved her way past the crowd of medicae, still dragging the unfortunate aide behind him. The unfortunate soldier was prone on an operating slab, the medical hut's inbuilt repair davits hanging like metal tentacles over him. His head, which was the only obviously organic part of him, was lolled to one side, the skin an unpleasant shade of grey. The plasma cores built into his chestplate were steaming gently, and several small coolant vanes were already glowing red-hot.

"This could DESTORY US ALL, you incompetent FOOL!"

The Magos punched the aide full on in the throat, her mechanical fingers digging a cluster of tubes out of his neck. His face turning an unpleasant shade of purple, he began to choke and struggle. Hethrhodin plunged the jagged, broken ends of the tubing into several spots in the Skitarii's neck, cauterising them in place with sparks that danced off the end of her fingers. With a crunching hiss, his head shook, and a slight shade of pink re-entered his skin. The aide collapsed half-on the bed, unconscious but no longer purple.

"That's the biological systems stabilised. Now. I need a knife. Something _big_. NOW, MINIONS!"

Berthier automatically pulled his curve-hilted _baselard_ dagger from its arm holster, handing it pommel-first to the furious Magos. Without a word, she grabbed the knife then swung it at the injured soldier, driving it up to the hilt through the middle of his chestplate with a sickening crunch. There was a brief pause as everyone realised that their Magos had just punched a hole in the armour of a Skitarii under her own power. Then there was a wham as a tiny object ejected itself from the Skitarii's side, knocking a gaping hole in the wall and exploding in the air outside in what Berthier could swear was a small mushroom cloud. There was a long silence as the radiator fins on the soldier's armour made the tinking noises of cooling metal.

"Now that that's settled, I have a plan for our next assault, Maréchal. Um, if you could please follow me."

_The following bit is an excerpt from _Of Flashlights and Flak: an Index of the Imperial Guard_¸ volume 3125 subvolume 35, as compiled by one Daeanaus ab'Nhet, ex-Munitorium._

Guard, Edelweiss:

_(Guarde d'Edelweiss)_

Thanks to Edelweiss` odd combination of uninhabitable mountainous terrain and extremely compact habitable valleys, Edelweiss combat has established itself around the principle of maximized close-range firepower...

... Troop discipline is encouraged, and the prominent use of fireport-equipped mantlets allows for effective slow advances against extremely heavy firepower...

... The modernization of Edelweiss truly occurred in M.30, with the rise of a man known as Robur the Conqueror (_le Conquérant)_. His development of the short-range weapon known as an _halleberde_ or burst-pike combined the traditional ideas of high-damaging close-range fire with a melee weapon that could also keep an enemy away led to the formation of the modern Guard and its 10 000–strong Regiments...

...Three main force types, being Young (_Jeune Guarde)_, Middle (_Moyen Guarde) _and Old (_Vieux Guarde)_ Gurad force compositions. Young Guards are typically infantry-only, with an emphasis on precision formations as well as ultraprecise timing. Middle Guards are a combination of heavy armour and infantry, and tend to encourage slightly more mobile tactics than the Young Guard. Old Guard units are entirely mounted, with infantry replaced by the dreaded _Carapacier_ (untransl.) mounted heavy gunners. In Old Guard units, the usual slow 'wave' tactics of the infantry-focused regiments are discarded in favour of a far more fast-moving rush tactic, intended to puncture through the enemy lines and achieve rapid encirclement...

...Known Intraguard Conflicts: Though sources are unreliable (see Appendix 212), the current rivalries between Edelweiss and Katyushan units are believed to have arisen in a friendly-fire incident between a Katyushan emplaced artillery division (probably the 4th or 5th Support Armies) and the Edelweiss 178th Old Guard.

_I could go on, but since the entry on Edelweiss is two-friggin hundred pages long with four separate appendices and bibliographies, there'd be no point. ab'Nhet apparently spent two hundred solid years writing this thing. It shows. He went insane afterwards. Got convinced that everyone he was writing about was just some sort of great galactic game._

Θ

Jishin 'Kari stumbled through the wreckage, her Titan limping from the tremendous damage it had taken to one leg. She could hear the stomp-stomp-stomp of her opponents, drawing nearer. She was hidden in the burnt-out bulk of the ship, but the _Principio Aevangelus_ could only hide for so long.

"Why are you running away, daughter?"

She gritted her teeth.

"Shut up, mother. I'm not running away. I'm not."

The Techpreists called it psychosis, a delusion from too much time spent synchronized with the _Principio Aevangelus_' systems. But 'Kari knew it wasn't. Mother was here. And mother was an aggravating old hag.

"I heard that, Jishin. It wasn't very nice."

Unconsciously, 'Kari punched the wall of the piloting chamber, her gloved fist crunch painfully against the video screens that lined the walls. Reacting to her movement, the Titan punched too, tearing a hole in the wreck of the ship. The cloud of dust marked her position clear as day.

Θ

_Aboard the _Apokalypsis Nunc...

"Sigurn, you've got her?"

"She won't get away. I'm saturating the area... it's the only way to be sure."

Flicking her curly hair out of her eyes, Moderatii Sigurn Wavey leaned over the firing console, traversing the immense hybrid cannon on the _Nunc_'s left arm. A combination of Demolisher, Vulcan mega-bolter and super-heavy flamer, it was the ultimate close-range weapon. The bolter whirred, then coughed a cloud of shells at the wreck of the spaceship, detonating with a thunderous rippling crackle against the twisted metal. Wavey checked a readout.

"Damn. Miss. We should move closer."

"Bugger that, Sigurn. I don't want to be facing that monstrosity at close range."

The drawling, Cadian-accented voice came from Moderatii Edward Toddarow, sitting in the right-hand CCW seat, his right arm encased up to the shoulder in the control mechanisms for the _Nunc_'s huge triple-bladed chainsword.

"Even the Razorhand can't beat her claws."

Princeps Bhachin nodded, cheery as ever.

"Edward has a point. I have no desire to impale myself on the weapons of that machine."

As he spoke, he walked the Titan back, assuming a partially-covered position behind a wrecked building. Crouching as far as his unwieldy machine could go, he opened a channel to the _Lupus Ferrum_.

"Mikael. Are you in a covering position?"

"Oh ,YEAH! The enemies of freedom will NOT escape from my mighty weapons!"

"That is so wonderful. Start your covering fire, we will see if we cannot drive her towards your guns. Whenever you are ready."

_Aboard the _Lupus Ferrum...

"JODIE! Are you ready to dispense the Emperor's JUSTICE?!"

Sectariat nodded briefly, her attention concentrated on the fire controls.

"All systems ready for overcharge. I'm saving the plasma cannons in reserve for when she breaks cover. Let's get this party started."

"RICHART!?"

Howke smiled grimly.

"Michael... ready when you are."

Vills-son slammed a hand down on the firing lever. The titan's weapon racks were open and fully extended, pointing all 8 individual weapons at the target. The overcharged reactor released all its energy in one burst, triggering the missile launchers, lascannons and mega bolters in a burst of ordinance so intense it nearly knocked the _Nunc_ over. Screaming through the din, Vills-son laughed triumphantly.

"HOW DO YOU LIKE ME _NOW!!?_ MWAHAHAHA!"

Θ

"Jishin..."

"They... they shot me, mother. They're making my _Aevangelus _bleed."

Twitching from signal input overload, the _Principio Aevangelus _thrust its head skyward. And screamed.

"My... BLOOD!"

Armoured fingers flexed,g lowing spikes of superheated metal sliding from beneath the fingertips. The Titan leapt, clearing the wreckage in a single bound, and tore towards the retreating _Lupus Ferrum_, ignoring the barrage of plasma bursts that lanced past it.

"R-rip and... tear... T-t-tear."

Dropping into a roll, the Titan's foot came swinging around, moving with a coordination that should have been impossible for a machine of its size. Its heel came cracking down on the _Ferrum_'s back, sending the smaller machine staggering, one gunpod hanging by torn wiring and pipework. Continuing its momentum, the Titan brought one fist down, the glowing blades smoothly cutting the left arm off. Jamming its other hand to the Reaver's face, the concealed mega bolter on its wrist deployed smoothly, firing and reducing the pilot's compartment to pulp at point-blank range. With its pilots killed, and burning shrapnel tearing through what was left of its frame, the _Ferrum_ sunk to the ground, shutting down automatically. Then the _Aevangelus_ staggered as most of its throat was torn away.

The _Apokalypsis Nunc_'s external speakers boomed.

"How 'bout a shave, love?"

Coolant, hydraulic fluid and other unidentifiable liquids spraying from its severed throat, the _Aevangelus _collapsed onto one knee, and was engulfed in flames from the other Titan's flamer.

"Try fighting something your own size!"

'Kari shook her head as damage warnings blared through it.

"Not... not like this. No. No. NO!!!"

The purple Titan's hand soared out of the smoke, carrying half of a still-active plasma gun's power cell. The blob of boiling star stuff impacted with the _Nunc_'s wide, flattened face, eating through the hull and destabilizing the reactor. As the nuclear fire washed over her, 'Kari cried manic tears.

Then the simulation ended.

Clambering out of the sim pods, the crews of the two Reavers trooped wearily to the debriefing room, to be dressed down by Hethrhodin, while a team of medicae carted Princeps 'Kari away on a stretcher, dosing her with large quantities of tranquilizer.

Bérthier, standing behind a one-way mirror in one of the observation, couldn`t control himself.

"Merde... mais c'était quoi cette connerie? C'était fou ca!"

"Language, _Maréchal_, language. One should not question the servants of the Emperor or the Machine God, no matter their… eccentricities."

Unaware that he was speaking Gothic, Bérthier turned to Emil Leman.

"Eccentricities? That girl is... is... disturbed! Didn't you hear what she was screaming? That was... sick. Twisted. I have seen much that I would rather forget in my service, but I cannot believe that they use someone so obviously psychotic as a warrior. It's... unethical. Heretical almost!"

"Ah yes. That reminds me, _Maréchal_. It has come to my attention that there is an Imperial shrine in the outbuildings that was damaged in the orbital attack. I would like to request that we send a contingent to hold and restore it. I feel it would be excellent for morale."

Berthier sat down angrily.

"I have told you before, commissar, that we should not overextend out position. When the Edelweiss move, they move in large groups or not at all. If we disperse our forces, we are vulnerable to guerrilla raids, and we will not be able to direct all our fire against the enemy. Though I can appreciate the morale value your idea has, restoring a shrine will have to wait."

It was Leman's turn to lose control.

"To leave a holy shrine to Him on Earth unattended is a crime worse than treason or desertion. You speak of heresy? To merely propose the abandonment of a desecrated shrine is heresy of the utmost!"

"I think not, commissar. I am in charge here, and I call the orders. Get back to work."

Once he was sure that she had left the room, Berthier mopped the sweat from his forehead. _Mon Dieu_, but she was terrifying. He shuddered. There was something so... fiery about here. All-consuming. He would have called it psychic powers if he didn't know for a fact that she was a blank. His eyes strayed absently to the carpet, and he noticed the two scorched bootmarks in its surface.

"Quoi...?"

Θ

The conference chamber stinks. It's not so much the people in it as what they're wearing. Irohov and the TAchimera have called everyone in for a 'strategy session'.

_Oh, right. This is skipping ahead about three days from Irohov's big genius moment. In the intervening time, neither side did a whole lot, and Sebell spent most of the time just exploring the _Kingdakka_. Fun times, but not hugely important in the grand scheme of things. Anyways..._

Mordakka has called in his the five Nob Bosses, as well as a few members of the bridge crew. The Nob Bosses are what you'd call the company commanders of the different divisions of Mordakka's troops, and they, along with the fact that the rooms full of Orks, are the ones making the smell. Montag of the Flamaz is sprawled over a seat, his cybork legs up on the table, his head hidden by a plume of acrid cigar smoke. Tezlork of the Shokkaz is hunched over, his massive bulk barely fitting in his seat. He's still wearing his big suit; it reeks of battery acid, although it's stopped grounding sparks into nearby metal objects. Ahnord of the Flakkas insists on standing, his stiff posture maintained by the dozens of ammunitions belts that ring his squat frame. Big Berto, of the Boomas, is not, as his name implies, at all big. He's small and twitchy, and smells alarmingly of cordite. Squigwood of the Lootas is last; he is oddly un-orky, a tall, thin figure lugging a huge triple-barreled shoulder cannon wrapped in dirty canvas, dressed in a sober engineering jumpsuit.

Aside from the smell, the conference room is noisy, as rooms tend to be when filled with several Orks. Mordakka solves the noise problem by putting a Raildakka round through the roof.

"OY! Lissen up ladz! Dis 'ere is Irohov. 'E may be a humie, but 'e's right fighty, and real, real smart! So Pay 'tention!"

Irohov nods to the TAchimera, who activates his battlefield simulation. There is, understandably, some consternation among the Orks.

_That's an understatement if I ever heard one._

Once the room is quiet again, Irohov speaks.

"Lissen up boyz, and lissen good. Dis here's us, and the Kingdakka. We'z..."

He pauses for a second.

"Forget it. I'm speaking Humie. Anyways. We're facing an enemy who outnumbers us, how we're assuming is clustered in a small area, and who has heavier fire support than we do. What should we do?"

Montag raises a hand, and waves away the smoke. He's wearing thick sunglasses, even inside, and there's a smug grin on his face.

"Dat's an easy wun! Ya get yer boyz movin'! A big army like dat ain't strong 'gainst da fastest! 'It an' run, 'til dey'z dun!"

There's a rumble of alternating disagreement and agreement around the room. Then Big Berto speaks up.

"Nah! Yez gots it all rong! Ya don't 'it an' run, ya 'it an' keep 'itting! If dere'z lots of 'em in a big group, ya just shoot 'em wif real big gunz so dey can't move, den keep shootin until dere all dead!"

There's a growl of agreement from the Lootas and Flakkas.

Irohov shakes his head.

"While your ideas have merit, you're not looking at the big picture here. What you don't realize is that your Warboss' force configuration makes it ideal for a static defence."

Tezlork gives a scornful snort, the sound muffled by his helmet.

"Dee-fenz? Fer Orks? Naaaahhh, yer 'ead's bust up, Humies. We'z da Orks! We don't sit behind wallz! We fight!"

"What were you doing when we got here then? You were holed up behind walls, defending yourselves from an attacking army. And doing it quite well, if I do say so myself. Dat fing yew used was real shokky!"

Mollified, Tezlork motions for him to continue. The Triarch waves his hands, and the holographic simulation starts to move. Column after column of simulated troops, marked in red, begin to march towards the virtual _Kingdakka_, firing as they come. The tanks among them open up, the shells detonating against the virtual shield. Then something begins to happen; several blue structures begin to appear around the ship, bursting out of the simulated ground. The newly reveal gun mountings open up, tearing holes into the enemy. A virtual titan appears; it's the one with the multiple cannons, remaining a long distance away and pounding the shield with its weapons. The _Kingdakka_'s guns begin firing, ignoring the infantry and tanks and directly targeting the Titan; as well as the two oversized triple railguns, the ship fires all of its cannons, tearing holes in the enemy war machine and detonating it in a simulated mushroom cloud that garners a light smattering of applause and a few approving bellows from the assembled Orks.

"Now. Orks and humans, imagine that, but _bigger_."

_Irohov's plan was an interesting one, but it shows that he's a Katyushan born and bred. Trust the best long-range firepower experts in the galaxy after the Tau to automatically go on the defensive. Where were we... ah._

There's an interrogative cough from Squigwood.

"I see a few problems in yer plan. It ain't tactically viable."

There's an angry yell from the other Orks, although the Loota contingent remains silent. Montag reaches over, preparing to clout Squigwood over the ear.

"Yer bein' too smart fer yer own g-"

"Stop."

I don't even see Irohov pull the gun, but Montag notices the flamer pistol's stubby barrel pressed against the back of his neck. If the pilot light is burning him, he doesn't show it.

"Squigwood, was it? Please, continue."

"Well, it's tactically effective, I fink, but it ain't resource an' time-'fective. Ya need da gubbinz an' da time ta build da new gunz and fix up da ship, an wif a big enemy force like dat pretty close by, time is something we ain't got. Also, we'z got sum loot from da wrecked tanks an' whatnot, but it ain't enuff ta build gunz on th' calibre dat you're proposing. Oh, and da _Kingdakka_ don't 'ave enough power to run all its' weapons systems. What are ya gonna do about th' time an' power an' resource problems?"

Irohov grins. There's that glint in his eye.

"Well analyzed. But don't worry, we have a solution. I've been talking with the TAchimera, and we discovered something rather... interesting in his blueprints. Sebell?"

I look up, surprised.

"What?"

_"Pay attention!"_

"Tell me how the TAchimera's standard issue chain-grapnel cannon functions."

I automatically lapse into 'engineer mode'.

"It's essentially a miniature warp portal, connected to a few simple servos for targeting. We discovered a pocket dimension in the Warp; some sort of Slaneeshi manifestation of the concept of bondage and imprisonment. The lab techs back at HQ insisted on calling it the Plane of Infinite Chains. We found that it contained nothing but chains of varying thickness and material composition, but infinite length. We created a few mobile warp portals, bound them in to the frames of the TAchimeras, added some telekinetic charms to allow them to be controlled in-flight, and some sort spells to ensure we got the right kind of chains, and there you go. Oh. You're not saying we should..."

_"You magnificent bastard. This ship has its own inbuilt forge. All we do is detach the grapnel launcher from the TAchimera, run it into the raw material feed for the forge, and turn it on, and we've got an infinite supply of high-quality material! And by modifying the spells, you can get different materials depending on what you're building! _

There's an annoyed grunt from an Ork in the back of the room.

"'Old on! Are yez serious? Wot are da chances of findin' somfink dat useful, 'an somfink dat duz wot we want perfiktly?! I'ze an Ork, and even _I_ know dat don't norm'ly 'appen!"

There's a long pause as everyone considers this. Irohov seems about to speak, but then the room plunges into darkness as the lights cut off. There is, to put it simply, an uproar. And then it quiets as we see the glow; it's a faint bluish flickering, like the holograms projected by the TAchimera, but there's something about it... I can tell that whatever it is, it's not a hologram. The thin blue haze consolidates, coalescing into the vaguest of shapes; an eye. I shiver, feeling my nose begin to bleed as a massive surge of Warp energy permeates the room. Behind me, I hear Azul give a low whimper of fear. Then, a voice.

**"Just. As. Planned."**

I'm on my knees, grovelling in an instant, but the apparition is gone. The light returns, leaving a crowd of dazed and frightened Orks and humans behind. Irohov draws a shuddering breath.

"Was that...?"

Root's cloud of energy glows slightly brighter.

_"Yes. It was. He's got... an interest in this mission. Anything that may seem to be random chance or a convenient coincidence isn't. Not when he's on our side. Now, continue._

Irohov takes another deep breath, still quite shaken.

_We all were. Quite shaken._

He wipes his bloodied nose.

"A-anyways. Where was I.. Oh. W-with an infinite amount of materials, we can get the secondary reactors on the _Kingdakka_ back fully online, and enough power to keep the new defense grid operational. That's that p-problem solved. Now: the time issue."  
_  
__"How are you going to solve this one?"_

He points a shaking finger at me.

"Time slicing."

"Oh, you can't be serious..."

* * *

Again, thanks to all of you, especially those who have added the story to their favourites.

As for the references; I'm glad yo uappreciate them. There are morei n this chapter! Identify away!


	4. Swords, Shadows and Ships

_What follows is an excerpt from a conversation between several troopers and a certain Commissar at the Imperial's HQ. For whatever reason, the observer recorded it in Gothic and not Edelweiss, hence the language difference._

Trooper Spirout gulped nervously, eyes flicking to the equally worried-looking Trooper Fantaseau standing next to him. The pair was sweating copiously in the bright Pyros sunset, the glare bouncing into their eyes in the most uncomfortable way possible. A cheerful guitar tune floated through the air, emanating from the colourfully painted hardwood instrument Colonel Leman was strumming away at. The only other noise breaking the awkward silence was the distant shouting of the changing of the wall guard back in the camp. The three were on top of one of the ring walls, Leman sitting with her legs and the long hem of her coat, which she insisted on wearing despite the heat, hanging over the long drop-off of the wall, the unfortunate Spirout and Fantaseau standing a ways behind her. Unable to take the silence any longer, Fantaseau spoke.

"C-commissar, Ma- er, sir, it was an accident! We were just moving some supply crates, and then the sun got in my eyes, and I tripped, and I lost my grip, and the crate fell, and..."

Spirout broke in, eager to back up the story.

"The fault was mine, Commissar. I tripped. We were just trying to help! We didn't mean to crush the shrine-thing!"

It _was_ what had happened after all. Admittedly, they'd both had a few gulps of synthwine beforehand, but everyone did that! An Edelweiss who didn't drink a glass of wine or two to slake his thirst was... well, hardly an Edelweiss at all. And so what if they'd crushed a shrine! It wasn't even a big one! Just a little portable field unit like you always saw the cogboys use. The cheery guitar tune continued, clashing jarringly with the unpleasant aura that Leman gave off. There were rumours in the barrack rooms; some people said she was a witch, others a sanctioned psyker. The really bold veterans were sure she was an Untouchable. Spirout shivered despite the sweat dripping down his temples. Without stopping her strumming, she spoke.

"Do you know what the Omnissiah is?"

"Sir?"

"Do you. Know what. The Omnissiah is?"

"Um, sir, it's the cogboy's god. The Machine God, I guess, ma'am. Sir."

Leman sighed. Spirout tried desperately to resist the urge to run.

"Wrong, Trooper Spirout. Close, but nonetheless wrong. Trooper Fantaseau?"

"Um, well, don't they say that the Emperor is part of the Machine God or something? I mean, they must be wrong, because the God-Emperor, in all his most, um, holy glory on Earth, is the one and true god of all mankind, right? Sir?"

The commissar gave an incremental tip of the head, which might have been a nod. Spriout relaxed. Good old Fantaseau. Always quick on his feet, that one. If anyone deserved a round down at the canteen, it was him.

"Commissar, we apologise for whatever crimes we have unintentionally committed. Anything we can do to repent for our sins, we're willing to do, sir."

The strumming stopped. There was a rustle of fabric, a soft mechanical buzzing, and a quiet noise like a knife cutting a tomato in half. Spirout and Fantaseau both looked down at the clean, precise cuts that a row of diamond-tipped chainsword teeth had left in their midsections. They were dead before they hit the ground. Spriout's last conscious thought was wondering where the sword had come from.

Holding the Eviscerator heavy chainsword in one hand and cradling her guitar in the other, Commissar Emil Leman turned and addressed the two corpses.

"The Omnissiah is part of the Emperor, but a fraction of His true glory. Dishonouring but a portion of His greatness is besmirching Him in His entirety. That is a lesson that all those who are truly faithful should know. Clearly, you lack faith. And the penalty for disbelief is death. There is only the God-Emperor of mankind, resting in His golden throne on Earth. Nothing else matters. Only His will."

Θ

We're standing a ways down the hill; Irohov, Azul, Mordakka, the TAchimera and I. Root is momentarily occupied, tracing a circle several kilometres wide in the dusty red soil, its middle centered on the _Kingdakka_'s reactor room. I'm sitting cross-legged just inside the line, tracing a smaller circle around myself. Instead of the usual complicated pentagrams, all I do is mark the circle with twelve regular lines; the hours of a clock.

_When it comes to temporal spells, drawing runes and whatnot is normally unnecessary, since you need to summon a physical construct to channel the temporal energy through. Only the most ridiculously energy-intensive temporal spells require runes, and this particular time-slice was a doozy._

"Irohov, everyone, could you get inside the circle? And make sure you don't scuff it or break the line."

"'An wot 'appens if we duz break da liddle lines, den?"

"Timeslicing destabilization. Different sections of your body begin to run at different speeds relative to each other. Large portions of you die of blood loss and rot, while other bits tear themselves to pieces because individual muscles and tendons are moving at vastly different rates."

"Oh."

"Yep. Now, Azul, I'm going to need your help."

I pat the ground next to me.

"Sit here, and place Nnoitra here, and... here."

She sits, but there's a bemused look on her predatory face.

"Heretic, I know this isn't a blood rite of Khorne. Neither the Blood God nor the Emperor approve of sorcery. Why exactly do you need me, and Nnoitra?"

Root shimmers back into existence. He's doing the mental equivalent of panting.

"Something wrong?"

"_I just haven't partially materialized in a while. It's hard moving around, separate from my host body. You could have done it yourself."_

I shake my head firmly.

"No. I've got to conserve energy. We've got to conserve energy. Root, I'm going to do-"

"_A Pterrian Link? Is belief transferring really necessary?"_

Irohov, like the others, is looking suitable inquisitive.

"I know you're going to give me a long and extremely detailed answer anyways, but what exactly is a Terry-ann Link?"

_Sebell can go into Engineer mode, but he also tends to slip into Metaphysician mode. Now, I could quote some old grimoire Thate dothe talken 'pon the grym Horrors of the Warpe moste detailededly, or I could explain Pterrian Links succinctly and briefly. Which I will. Forgive any lapses in proper professional style in the next segment, because I'm not much of a philosopher. Anyways. You probably know how the Warp is powered by belief, right? The more you believe in something, the more you _feel_ it, the more that concept gains strength. Take Slaneesh: debasement and hedonism made flesh. The idea behind the Pterrian Link (Named after the great Vimes Pterrian, the famous Ankian sorcerer-junkie) is to disguise the warp presence of one thing as that of another; it means that the belief and emotion fuelling one thing is temporarily fuelling something completely different. The spell has a wide variety of uses, with what it does only really limited by the imagination of the caster ('Cause it's really easy to cast and doesn't take a whole lot of energy). In this case, Sebell would use the spell to boost the amount of energy he takes in while casting the time-slice, then shut down the Link as soon as he was done, allowing Nnoitra and co. to recharge. Anyways, I've gone on. I'll skip ahead to the actual exciting spell casting stuff. Right. Okay._

The miniature runes on the Proteus armour begin to glow a faint gold as I mutter the words to start the Link. I point the palm of my hand at Azul, and she shudders slightly as eight thin streamers of golden light connect my hand with several points across her skull.

"Heretic, you never said it would hurt so much. Continue to pain me and I may have to start removing your fingers."

"Settle down, and stop resisting. Tel Nnoitra to calm- ah. There we go. Thank you Nnoitra."

Azul replies in Nnoitra's mechanical screech.

"Make this worth my time, and energy, Sorcerer."

Feeling the energy flow, I begin to speak the spells for a wide-area time-slice. The ground shudders, the reddish dust swirling in lazy spirals, then coalescing, with an oddly tuneful grinding noise, into huge ranks of glass pillars at regular intervals around the line in the sand. The pillars begin to spin, shards of glass breaking off and orbiting around them with a low whining noise. I feel my nose start to bleed as different parts of me start to slightly temporally flux. Then my vision goes red, there is a massive _thump_, and everything is back to normal. The pillars are hazy and indistinct, and the line in the sand has become a huge glassy dome surrounding the _Kingdakka_'s landing site. The air outside has taken on a strange sapphire hue, streaked through with brilliant blood-red. I stand up, feeling the joints in my legs pop uncomfortably.

"_Well that went well."_

"Magos Hethrohodin, we need to talk."

Bérthier clicked his heels together. The Magos didn't strike him as the type to appreciate formalities, but he didn`t feel right without a little saluting of a (technically) superior officer. The diminutive figure in red gave a start, turning away from the partially dismantled repair drone she`d been tinkering with on her cluttered workbench.

"Oh. Um. Marysh- Bérthier. What. Do you want to talk about?"

At her nod, Berthie took a seat in one of the cushy, high-backed metal swivel chairs scattered across the spacious, airy office.

"I believe you can guess, Magos."

Hethrhodin waved a hand lazily, and several of the wall screens sprang to life, displaying blurry picts of several horribly mutilated corpses.

"The deaths. Er, murders. Indeed. You, you think it has something to do with the Greenskins? Well, their attacks?"

"Quite possibly. I've just gotten word that all our scanner beams have lost their signals."

"What?" She was fully turned in her chair now, leaning forward, a worried scowl on her face. "They lost? They lost the signal? How? It can't be mechanical, or. Or. Well, we'd know."

"It's not a mechanical problem. All of the scanners still work. Your repair teams have confirmed that. It's just that, as far as the scanners are concerned, there is an area of complete _nothingness_ around the enemy encampment, as of about five minutes ago. No electromagnetic radiation, no vibrations, nothing. All we get on pict recorders is a non-reflective, black dome with a diameter of about six kilometres. We may be dealing with more than Orks. The astropaths say they're getting disturbing feelings from the dome. Nothing definite, but they think it might be Chaotic."

The Magos gasped, collapsing back in her chair.

"C-Chaos? On my planet?"

"It's more likely than you think. I've also got a first draft of the medicae's autopsy reports on the cadavers of your archaeology team. All the wounds were inflicted by something with an extremely intense powerfield. They found this inscribed on, what was his name..."

"Enginseer-Excavator William Dyer."

"They found this carved in to the skin of his back."

He handed over a thin data-slate. Hethrhodin retched. It was as if someone had taken a metal spike, and whittled away at the man's skin to form a series of ghastly, blood-soaked letters.

IT WAITS

Farther along the stretch of mangled skin, the same hand had carved an eight-pointed star.

The data-slate fell from Hethrhodin's hands.

"Omnissiah protect us. They know what we're hiding."

"Wh-?"

She was on her feet in a flash, striding to her desk. As she tapped the keys of her desktop cogitator plate, heavy metal blast screens slammed shut across the wide bay windows. Bérthier heard the office door lock with a loud clunk, and a hazy forcefield snapped across it.

"What's going on? What do they know you're hiding?"

When she spoke, her voice was devoid of any of the mumblings, stuttering and self-correction.

"Berthier, what I'm about to tell does not leave this room. At the moment, it is known only to me, a few select members of my archaeology team, who are now dead, and the Fabricator-General of Mars himself. There is a reason this base is so heavily guarded despite being well away from anywhere dangerous. The Titans are not here to be repaired. They are here to defend something. Five hundred years ago, my Explorator team landed on Pyros, hoping to make a routine sweep. We knew that colonists from Terra, way back in the Dark Age of Technology, had settled here at some point or another. We expected, at best, some minor scraps of farming equipment. What we found was... a Titan. A Titan like no other. It had decayed over time, and had apparently suffered from a meteor impact, but from what we could tell it was both human, and at the same time, unlike anything else we had ever seen. It was technologically advanced on a level that would put the Eldar to shame. We managed to recover a considerable portion of the memory of the computer that had maintained it. Under orders from Mars, we set about rebuilding it. This base, this _fortress_ is the end result of that project. As for the machine... we know the Ancients called it the _First Gospel_. How good is your Old High Gothic?"

"First... _principus_? And... _Mon Dieu. Principio Aevangelus_. "

"That's not all. We discovered that the wreck of the _First Gospel_ lay in a cradle... a defensive launch cradle, that is, above a far larger structure. This."

She tapped a key on her desk, and the screens changed, showing a brilliantly white sphere hanging in a field of mottled black and grey.

"This is a sensor read of Pyros' crust, one kilometre down. That thin line there is our bore shaft. The sphere is 500 meters wide, and impenetrable to anything we could throw at it. We've tried macro charges, cutting lasers... nothing gets in. We haven't ever been able to scrape samples of the exterior material off. It's completely impenetrable. Dyer was working on a theory; he thought that an extremely high-energy but tightly focussed las blast might break the shell, but you'd need a lasgun the size of a house, with a more advanced optical system than anything Mankind can produce to pull it off, and we weren't going to scavenge one from our orbital defense system. Dyer thought he could get in. Now he's dead. Whatever we've found, they want."

Θ

An unfortunate side-effect of the time-slice is headaches. I've taken to walking around the barrier, distancing myself from the clamour as the Orks try to get the _Kingdakka_ back in to manageable shape. According to my armour's internal chronometer, it's the fifth day after the slice. A little less than an hour of time has passed outside the dome. I could increase the difference, but I'm already tired as it is. The slice is more draining than I had expected. I'm not weak by any means, but the tremendous amounts of energy, flowing through my body, especially those supplied by Nnoitra, are wearing me out. I feel like I haven't slept in several days, even though what I've mostly been doing is sleeping. And eating. Once you get used to it, ground squig mixed with partially charred moss isn't half bad. I stroll along the edge of the barrier, contemplating the low humming of the incorporeal pillars that keep the dome stable, and trying to ignore the continuous sound of hammering and construction noise as the Orks take advantage of their new limitless supply of metal.

"_Sebell..."_

"I thought we agreed to a no-talking policy. You know we both need the rest."

Then I notice the movement. There's a blot of something on the dome; a dark stain on the outside, as if all sunlight is being cut off in a small area. As I approach, there's another flicker of movement, and the darkness _pushes_ through the surface of the dome, coalescing into a writhing knot of shadow on the inside. I catch a brief glimpse of five glowing red dots before the shadow explodes outwards, engulfing me in inky darkness. Then the whispering starts.

"She never loved you..."

"They're all dead... you killed them, Sebell, you killed them all and you could have said no..."

"Your life is a lie... you are a meaningless cog in a vast, uncaring machine. The universe is grim, and dark, and when your puny life ends the vast consciousnesses that control you like a puppet will feast upon your soul..."

"Shri. Enough already. You know it's me."

Just as suddenly as it had swirled around me, the shadow contracts, taking the shape of a frail figure, clad in tattered black robes, her pale, sickly face partially covered by a black mask with five red camera inserts set in it; before me stands Shri Pfelnig, Eye of Tzeentch.

"Sorry about that, Vivat. But hey, it's good to see you again."

_Shri Pfelnig, also known as the Shrieker, also known as the Head of Black Ops at Tzeentch HQ. She has a reputation as the best terror-warfare practitioner since Alpharius Omegon, and she deserves it. A ridiculously powerful telepath, she has a record of causing more psychological casualties than actual physical deaths in every one of her campaigns. Despite having what amounts to an army at her command, she tends to work alone. Biologically, she's twelve years old... mentally, no-one's entirely sure._

Shri locks me in a crushing bear hug, and the Proteus armour lets out a warning beep as I feel a joint in my spine pop.

"_Good to see you again, squirt!"_

"I'll tear your soul into a million pieces, Root, you stupid bastard! How's my favourite team of backstabbers going?"

"_Not bad, not bad at all. What brings you to our operational area? Well, I mean, aside from... y' know."_

She sighs, running a finger through her dirty long hair, which I now realize is clotted with dried blood.

"Just tidying up some loose ends. The dig team is out of the picture, but I couldn't get to the political officers. They've got a Pariah in the Commissariat."

"What? We weren't briefed on that!"

"I know. Neither was I. Command's not entirely sure, but they don't think she'll be able to interfere much."

"And aside from that? What about the other two? When do I get briefed about them?"

"Soon, soon. And the ship is going to arrive on time."

"_Good, then. Just as planned?"_

"You've got that right."

As I walk back towards the _Kingdakka_, I see Shri slip back through the time-slice. She claims she has a little more work to do, but I know she'll be back. All part of the plan. Nearing the ship, I hear a commotion from coming from the shadow of one of the landing legs. There's a roar, a hiss, and the _stomp... stomp... stomp_. A huge four-legged machine, trailing sparks and clouds of smoke lumbers out of the shadows. It looks to be one of the wide-barrelled Booma artillery cannons, mounted on a much larger walking base, with several primitive but effective-looking gun turrets strapped on for good measure. The ungainly machine clanks to a halt, and the top hatch opens, a white-bearded figure poking his head out.

"Irohov? What is this thing?"

"I give to you the new Heavy Booma!" he exclaims triumphantly, wiping soot and rust out of his face. "We needed a way to get the heavy artillery more mobile, and we were low on armour support. So I got the Lootas to whip something up for me. We've got a dozen others under construction as we speak!"

"_What about the stationary cannons?"_

"There's a team of meks digging out the tunnel network now. Ork technology may not look like much, but _apoli_, does it ever _work_!"

"Glad to hear it. When d'you expect to be finished?"

"Hold on..."

He disappears back inside the machine. There's a brief silence, a clank, and with a hiss of hydraulics the Heavy Booma sinks to the ground. Irohov pops the hatch again, and then scrambles down a ladder to terra firma. He stops for a few seconds at the base of the ladder, panting.

"Sorry... we've-pant- had a few problems with exhaust backflow. It goes straight to your head. Anyways-whew- The _Kingdakka_'s essentially done except for some modifications Squigwood is making to the antimissile system, but other than that it's perfectly flight worthy. The stationary turrets will be ready in a day or two; all we really need to do is position them. That just leaves the Boomas; they're probably going to take another three days. Call it just three days."

"So half an hour-ish real time? Anything I can do to speed up the process?"

"No, you should probably just rest. The Orks... even the best Katyushan forges can't work at those kinds of speeds. I have some mechanical experience, but this is beyond anything I've seen. They're moulding metal so fast it's just a blur, and hammering stuff into shape while it's still red-hot. It shouldn't work, but it does."

"_Excellent. Now, If you'll excuse us, I think Sebell needs to pass out for another twelve or so hours."_

Θ

"So, it's decided, then?"

"If you think it's a good idea, Bérthier."

The Magos and Maréchal burst into the multi-storey central command center of the Pyros base. Hethrhodin hurried to a knot of technicians, jabbering hurriedly in Binary. Bérthier grabbed a nearby vox unit, thumbed the switch to 'General Announcements', and began to speak.

"Attention all Mechanicus and Edelweiss forces. As of this moment we are at full mobilization capacity. All troops, tank crews and Titan pilots are to prepare for immediate mobilization. Edelweiss crews are to bear full carapace and heavy weapons. You know what to do. Get to work, people."

The command center exploded into hustle and bustle as various groups scurried for their battle stations. An aide hurried to Bérthier`s side.

"Qu'est ce que c'est notre plan, Maréchal?"

"Formation standard. Et dit aux étables de préparer mon coeurl. On galope."

_Half an hour later..._

The entirety of the Edelweiss force was ready to march, rank upon rank of carapace-armoured soldiers standing in the shadows of the Thunderer siege tanks and even larger Titans. At the rear of the column was a massed rank of twenty-one enormous beasts, twenty of them bearing armoured _plateformes_ on their thickly muscled backs. The _carapaciers_, the dreaded Edelweiss heavy cavalry. Dwarfed by the huge green-skinned reptilian beasts was a smaller one, bearing a flag in the saddle. Bérthier leaned across the automatic grenade launcher mount, scratching his coeurl on the soft skin just below the bony neck ridge.

"Alors, Marengo, ma p'tite bibitte, vous aimez ca, non, espéce de gros bétas, la."

Thrumming in excitement and pleasure, the Coeurl tilted its boxy, thickly armoured skull back, pointing the topmost of its four pairs of sonar eyelets at Bérthier. Marengo's feeder tentacles were whipping back and forth, the groundcar-sized beast no doubt feeling the rush of a high-oxygen environment. Bérthier noticed its rear pair of climbing legs twitching; the big lummox obviously was raring to go. Reshuffling his two long-hafted _bec de corbin_ pole-hammers in their sidesaddle sheaths, the _Maréchal_ dialled the command frequence on his portable vox. Knowing that his message went out not only to the Edelweiss, but also to the Titans, the command center and the few Skitarri left on guard duty, he spoke in Gothic.

"Forward!"

Θ

_I'm thinking it's time for another brief factual interlude; think of it as a breather before the dying and the exploding and the Titans start to happen. Here's an excerpt from Dawyd Atenbrow's blockbuster ecological treatise_ A Galaxy of Life; A Compendium of Extraordinarily Dangerous Land Animals_, Chapter seven: _Gentle Giants: The Tramplers and Gougers_._

The Edelweiss Coeurl or _Proulgrinus Pandoruum_ are a species of large, herbivorous land animals inhabiting the forested upper highlands of Edelweiss' equatorial regions...

Immensely physically strong, they possess both and endo and exoskeletons, probably as a result of the tremendous air pressure differentials on their homeworld. Triple hearts and two full sets of lungs allow them to metabolize oxygen with extreme efficiency, even in environemnts with low atmospheric density...

The body is heavily muscled, with the head surrounded by a thick bone plate, with gaps only for the mouth, feeder tentacles and eyelets, probably to protect the braincase in a fall. There are two pairs of legs, each with four opposable toes; the front pair, being the larger of the two, is used primarily for running, while the rear pair, which can orate almost 360 degrees at the hip is used for greater speed as well as climbing.

Coeurl are surprisingly intelligent; individual subspecies bred specifically for their brainpower are said to have reasoning capacity on the level of a two-year-old human child. Though somewhat hostile to human presence, they form strong bonds of loyalty when in human company for long enough, and will not hesitate to protect long-time riders with their lives...

There are two primary subspecies: the tank-sized, immensely strong but dull-witted _Boulonnais_, and the smaller, but far smarter and faster _Camargue_. Both breeds are used as cavalry in the Edelweiss armed forces.

Θ

I grin in anticipating, flexing my shoulders and feeling the nanomachine armour adjust to fit better. The three days have gone by in a flash, and everything is prepared; The _Kingdakka _is ready to lift, and I saw Shri slip aboard sometime last night, the Heavy Boomas are loaded and clanking, the stationary defence guns are buried in their pillboxes, Azul has sharpened Nnoitra, Irohov has oiled his flamer pistols, the TAchimera is even bouncier than usual: Everything is going as planned. I snap my wrists, watching as the nanomachines in the Proteus armour reshape themselves into a familiar form: two blunt-fingered powered gloves, covered in shifting blue runes.

"_Gauntlets are ready. Let's go back into real time._"

"Everyone ready?"

The sound of the crumbling glass pillars is drowned out by a cacophonous howl of triumph.

"WAAAAAAAAGH!"

Θ

"Time to arrival?"

"One hour plus or minus two minutes thirty seconds."

"Acceptable. Weapons status?"

"All las turrets at 100 percent, missile tubes loaded for precision orbital bombardment. Reactors turning over at full; the engine crew syat they can boost them up to 150 percent in an emergency. Obital strike team is on station. Fighters are loaded in and ready for drop. We're at full combat efficiency."

"Excellent. Set ship status to yellow alert. Tell Nevski and Kutuzov to get suited up. I want them dropping on time with everyone else."

"Of course, Captain."


	5. Clash of the Titan

The plan is a simple one; Irohov and Azul will make a rapid advance through the enemy lines, covered by the Flamaz. Though they don't know it, Shri has made... arrangements to assure that they will be able to enter the enemy base and reach their destination. Meanwhile, Mordakka, the TAchimera, the Waaagh and I are on delaying duty; we're keeping the enemy back until... well, until the next portion of the plan can be brought into play.

The Orks have distributed themselves across the hillside; the barrier of junk has been torn down, replaced with an even line of heavily armoured bunkers. Interspersed amongst these are a series of metal hatches; as soon as the Imperials get within range, the stationary guns will deploy and wreak havoc.

There's movement on the horizon; far away is the dust cloud marking the enemy's advance. But nearer to hand are a few blots of red; a small team of Flamaz returning from a scouting mission. They whiz over my head, landing a ways behind me and reporting to Mordakka. He's set up his command center on the rocky promontory where he made his stand in the first battle. Now he comes clanking up, fully loaded down with the two Raildakkas, the Morta, the odd cheek-mounted Facedakkas, and the mysterious tubular device on one shoulder.

"Oy! Vivat! Montag sez dat da Titan is almost wifin range. Dey'ze gonna open fiyah soon. Ya fink we shud get Daend workin'?"

"Sure. Tell him to aim for the troops, not the Titans."

"Whyd'ya say dat, den? Why not kill da Titanz first?"

"_If we focus all our efforts on taking down the Titans, we won't have enough reserve firepower in case something goes wrong."_

"If yez say so..." He thumbed his vox. "Daend! Target da 'fantry! Don' shoot at da Titanz!"

"Hyoo might hwant too cohver hyoor eers, den."

The Enda Snipa ground to life, a huge series of cogs swivelling it ninety degrees, perpendicular to the ship's lumpy hull. A set of hydraulic jacks on the landing legs deployed, preventing the force of the gun's recoil from knocking the whole thing over. There was a brief moment as the lenses shifted back and forth, glass shrieking against metal.

KA-THWAMMP.

The _Kingdakka_ rocked as the long-barrelled cannon spat an immense tongue of fire, the force of the blast stunning everyone nearby. The shell tore overhead with a thunderclap, dopplering off into the distance.

Θ

"Capitain Quichote, vous avez une image de cette explosion?"

Bérthier's vox crackled, the dry voice of the head of the Coeurl division coming back faintly.

"Les senseurs l'enregistre comme... le lancement d'un cannon. Mais c'est impossible!"

Bérthier stiffened in the saddle. A cannon firing? But that would mean...

He switched his vox to general broadcast.

"INCOMING!"

The whole army scattered, diving to the ground and behind the cover of the Coeurls, Titans and tanks. As the faint whistling grew, Bérthier felt himself shiver despite the heat. The Titans. They would aim for the Titans. It wouldn't make sense to do otherwise... unless they had heavier weapons... Either way it was ba-

The whistling stopped, and the air was filled with an apocalyptic rumbling. Then everything went quiet. A tiny voice in the back of his head told Bérthier that his eardrums had just broken. Then the light; a tiny point at first, blossoming slowly into a blinding globe of white that washed away everything in its path. Slowly, it faded away to nothingness, leaving a cleared circle of bloodstained soil in its wake. Three hundred people had perished in a cataclysmic burst of sound and light.

Θ

"Eet eehs ahy dhirect heet, Boss."

"Keep firin' as fast as yez can!"

"Thayt's ghoeeng tooh tahyk a fyoo minootes, Boss."

"'Urry it up, den!"

He releases the vox.

"_So, everything's going well."_

"Yep. Stangest Waaagh I'ze ever dun, jus' waitin' around fer da enemy ta attack, but I fink it's workin'."

Θ

"Magos, a single shell from some sort of enemy supergun just killed an entire division of my men."

"Oh. Sorry, Bérthier. May the Omnissiah protect their souls, I guess."

"A slow advance isn't going to work. I'm going to make a charge. Can I count on having the Titans covering me?"

"Of course. I'm coming out to help."

Bérthier frowned, wiping some of the blood out of his ears. He wasn't deaf like some of the unlucky soldiers, but his ears were ringing painfully.

"What?"

"My Knights are on their way."

"All right... if you say so. Signing out."

"Good luck."

He flipped the switch to general broadcast again, speaking in Gothic for the benefit of the Titans, who no doubt would be receiving their own set of orders.

"Infantry units, disperse into platoons, one mantlet per platoon. Captains d'Obélisk and Quichote, your Thunderers and Coeurls are with me. Captain de Pencier, get your heavy weapons dispersed amongst the infantry. Titan pilots: keep pace with my charge. We need your weapons."

The army parted like a wave, infantry units scattering in perfect unison, spreading out in a thin line of green-armoured infantrymen. Seeing that everything was arranged to his satisfaction, the Maréchal thumbed his vox one final time.

"CHARGE!"

The armoured beasts and machines rumbled into motion as the cannon on the horizon exploded a second time. As they gained momentum in a rushing cloud of kicked-up dust, Bérthier could only pray that the shell wouldn't hit the easy target they were making. The whistling grew, and Bérthier pushed Marengo to greater heights of speed, the green-scaled Coeurl's front pair of legs pistoning up and down. The whistling grew, but instead of the terrible rumbling, there was a pulse of red light, and a deep humming sound. The _Prinicpio Aevangelus_, arm encased in a brilliant hexagonal grid of red light, punched the shell out of the air, the metal casing disintegrating as the front of the sonic warhead telescoped straight through the back of the shell. The Titan glanced ponderously down, and Bérthier could have sworn it was looking at _him_. Princeps 'Kari's voice, heavily amplified, boomed over the rumble of charging armour.

"I won't let anyone else die."

Θ

"Zog. Dey'z proachin' farst."

"_And they're not firing either. I think Atinboro should be ready_._"_

"Dat liddle git's prolly already got a finga on da firin knob."

"And you're sure the Waaaghkannons won't do that weird hallucination thing? Because that's kind of... disruptive."

"Oh, yeah. Dey'z been _upgraded_."

Θ

The Coeurls were outpacing the armour; the heavy tanks and even the Titans were lagging behind as the gargantuan beasts thundered ahead, eager to get into a fight. At exactly the same time, their secondary legs swung down, turning their long stride into an awkward-looking bouncing gait that somehow managed to be even faster.

Θ

"Wow. They're fast."

"_Defences?"_

"I'ze on it! Bloody vox-fing! Werk alreddy! Oh. Right den. BOYZ! OPEN FIYAH! WAAAAAAGH!"

Θ

As the Boyz in the bunkers opened up on the charging cavalry, dozens of metal lids dug into the ground popped open. Rising on thick hydraulic struts, huge conglomerations of heavy slugthrowing autocannons swivelled into position and opened fire. The air was filled with a storm of fist-sized adamantium bullets, spanging off the thick armour of the Coeurl and sending one to its knees, roaring in agony. The rest ignored the fire as they were trained to, rushing amongst the bunkers. The automatic grenade launchers and _halleberdes_ on the _plateformes_ opened up, knocking out several of the gun emplacements despite their thick armour. The bunkers fared somewhat better; they were less obvious targets, and the Lootas, Flakkas and Shokkas inside were free to let loose with stinging curtains of flak, miniaturised Booma shells and crackling sheets of deadly electrical discharge. Several of them were crushed by the rampaging Coeurls, which would leap high into the air, then come down directly on top of the armoured hard points, the sheer force of their impact turning the Orks inside to so much pulp. Leaving the cavalry to deal with the defences, the Thunderers finally arrived, moving to a position to directly engage the ship. There was no second line of defence. No-one in the attacking force noticed the small cluster of figures on a rocky promontory away to their west.

Θ

Azul and Irohov are on their way. The Triarch has arranged to acquire a pair of rocket boots similar to those that Azul used to wear, while Azul herself refuses any aid. They're surrounded by a mob of Flamaz, the hyperactive red-jacketed fast-attack troopers milling about in anticipation. Irohov gives me a final salute.

"So, everything's going according to plan?"

"Of course. We'll cover you with the shock and awe. Good luck."

"_You're gonna need it."_

Azul, who appears to be trembling slightly, pulls him back into the mob.

"Let's go, sir. These misguided Imperials need to be taught a lesson."

Then, from Nnoitra,

"There will be blood. Oh yes. Come, human, let us swallow their souls."

"If you say so, Azul. Right, boyz! Waaagh!"

With an answering roar from the Flamaz, they're off, Irohov and the Orks bounding away in a cloud of smoke, and Azul striding like a predatory animal along the path of their jumps.

"_All righty, then, Mordakka. Let the games begin, then."_

The Warboss grins, then lets out a roar.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH!"

At that precise moment, I drop the mass-cloaking spell, and the lines of trenches shimmer into view. The Heavy Boomas rise from their concealed pits, and open fire on the Thunderers as the _Kingdakka_'s guns begin to discharge at the Titans. Then the Enda Snipa releases another furious lance of firepower. And the Waaaghkannon on the side of the ship closest to the assault springs to life.

The kannon's multiple rings of cannonry open fire, and as the central firing core collapses into a sphere of pure hostile belief, I grin. This is going to be _fun_.

"ATINBORO! TARGET DA TITAN! MAXIMUM POWA! DERE'S AN OBSTACLE IN OUR WAY, 'AN WE'ZE GONNA BREAK FRU IT! SHOW DEM DAT DERE'S NUFFIN' DAT WE CAN'T 'ANDLE! DAT'S OUR ORKY WAY! PIERCE DA ARMA WIF DA DAKKA! WAAAGHKANNON! BREAKAH! FIYAAAAAH!"

"HA-SHWAAAAAAAAGH!"

The air explodes.

Θ

"M....mother. It's... so bright... so bright."

DAKKA

DAKKA

DAKKA

Θ

It's the first time I've actually _seen_ the beam of the Waaaghkannon; it's not a stream of energy. It's not a hail of firepower, or some tear in the fabric of reality. It's a fist. A fist made out of pure _orkyness_. As far as I can tell, it looks to be made entirely out of guns. Except that the space between each gun is a choppa. And the space between each choppa is another gun. It hurts to look at, but somehow it's impossible to look away.

The giant, extremely corporeal fist strikes the purple Titan head-on, blasting it off its feet. Somehow, its void shielding manages to hold under the explosion, but the outpouring of power is enough to completely obliterate the two other Titans. Then the brilliant green glow is gone, leaving the Titan in the center of a massive, smouldering crater.

"Wow."

"_Wait for it... wait for it..."_

Then the crater explodes, hurling the Titan a good hundred meters in the air. It lands with an earth-shaking _crunch_, but miraculously it's still intact.

"_Something's wrong. Take a look at this."_

My left eye twinges, and I'm suddenly seeing a magnified view of the Titan. It's completely unscathed, and I can read the name painted in spiked, ornamental scriptwork on one shoulder: _Principio Aevangelus_. Its skin seems to be shifting; there are hexagonal patterns of red light appearing and disappearing all over it.

Θ

A viewscreen flashed in the Titan command center, sending out a whooping alarm. A worried tech transferred it to the cockpit of the Magos' personal Knight, where she sat, her fingers steepled pensively in front of her, her eye implants inscrutable and inhuman under the reflected light from the screens.

"Ma'am, these readings we're getting from the _Aevangelus_! They're-"

"I know. It's reactivated. We are in a Quantum Recall situation. Prepare to launch the _Sturmjager_ Knights now.

"C-confirmed! Commencing launch sequence!"

As the machine around her sprang to life Hethrhodin took a few moments to savour the anticipation of the coming fight. She'd had plenty of time to reverse-engineer technology from the _First Gospel_, and these mighty Knight Titans were the result. They were to ordinary Knight Titans as an Astartes was to a Guardsman; more advanced in every way. It was good to finally get a real combat test going.

"On your command, Magos."

"_Sturmjager _One! Launch!"

The vox-linkup activated.

"_Sturmjager _Two! Launch!"

"_Sturmjager_ Three! Launch!"

A hatch in the surface of the fortress rumbled aside, just in time for the three blue and white-painted war machines to eject from their electromagnetic catapults, travelling well over the speed of sound. Ultracompact fusion verniers roared to life, and the three machines hit the ground at three times the speed of sound, the super powered induction motors in their legs driving a set of treads in each foot to maintain the speed on flat land. Hethrhodin and her _Sturmjagers_ were on the hunt. Omnissiah help anyone who got in their way.

Θ

"Am... am I dead? Mother? MOTHER?!"

Jishin 'Kari struggled frantically against the straps of her seat, but recoiled in terror and awe when she heard the Voice.

"**Pilot Neural Link Established. Confirming Reactivation."**

"M-mother? Help me. I'm so frightened."

"**Warning! Dangerous Pilot Psychosis Detected! Initialising Neuropathic Stabilisation Protocol AS-UK4!"**

'Kari screamed, clutching her head as the _singing _started. Then she slumped back in her seat as she _realised_.

"I... I don't need my mother. I don't hate myself. I love myself. I love everyone and everything. I love... liberty. And equality... and... There are those who would stop such liberty... inequality is a... sin?"

"**Pilot Mindset Re-established! Control Systems Functioning! Warning: Hostiles Detected. Activating Weapons Systems! Error: Modifications Detected! Recalibrating!"**

The machine rumbled, getting slowly to its feet. It's skin was covered in a tessellating pattern of reddish, translucent hexagons.

"**System Reoriented: Operating Capacity: 78%! Acceptable! Commencing Full Activation!"**

The _First Gospel_'s eyes flashed brilliant red. Its hunched-over neck tilted upwards, sliding into a more vertical position as what had previously been the back plates unfurled to form a transparent dome over the head. The two coolant fins on the shoulder blossomed into whirling columns of spikes, and the red hexagons flew outwards, forming a dome of quantum entanglement around the machine. The chestplate where the head had been split apart, revealing a boiling core of un-energy. The fingers flexed, deploying their steaming claws, but they continued to flex, the forearms sprouting huge heat sinks and coolant vanes. When the hands had completely transformed into glowing spherical cages of incandescent metal, a quantum singularity sprang into life in the center of each cage. Reality curved and bent around the _Gospel_ in a mind-shattering display of power. Then another shell from the Enda Snipa hit it, and it staggered back.

"**Analyzing** **Enemy Force Composition! Ork, Imperial, Chaotic Power Signatures Detected! Recommendation: Commence Full-Scale Defensive Protocols!"**

'Kari nodded grimly.

"Show them the power of the Commonwealth."

The _First Gospel _rose into the air, quantum foam swirling around it like clouds. Lines of energy coalesced around it, taking the form of huge chunks of metal, lined with glowing circuitry and shards of superconducting crystal.

"**Stability Motivators: Online! Synchrotron Emitters: Online! Quantum Gridfire Generator: Activated! Boson Supercollider Cannon: Charged! Particle Accelerator Countermeasure System: Installed! Hyper-Ablative Quantum Armour: Locked! Configuration Set!"**

Newly materialized components snapped into place, sending surges of godly power flowing along the machine's gangling arms. Hugely transformed, it crashed to the ground, crushing several retreating tanks beneath its house-sized feet.

"**Configuration Designation: **_**Gospel Prime**_**! I... AM... GOSPEL PRIME! Mission: Destruction Of All Non-Commonwealth Forces! Freedom Is Truth! Fascism Is A Lie!"**

Θ

"_Wha-?"_

"Root... what in the hell is that?"

"_I have no idea. Oh shit. Oh shitshitshitshit."_

"Not as planned?!"

Root flares into brightness, more corporeal than I've ever seen him.

"_Mordakka! Target that thing! Fire everything you've got! EVERYTHING!"_

Θ

_Gospel Prime_ raised its arms, the singularities in the palms flaring with incalculable amounts of energy.

"**Engaging Fascist Oppressors!"**

The very fabric of reality rippled, and with a thunderous crash tanks, Boomas and Coeurl began to explode, dissolving into clouds of incandescent dust. The ground shook, rocks disintegrating, as the shockwave of energy pulverizing anything that got in its way.

"Oh, merde. Oh tabarnac de saint de Sanguinius de caulisse..."

Bérthier wheeled Marengo around, trying desperately to escape the swath of destruction.

"Attention all units! Can anyone hear me?! KILL THAT MONSTROSITY! Anyone? Help!"

Unwittingly, his beast's wild flight brought him close to a certain rocky outcropping, straight through the void shield of the Orkish ship.

Θ

Through the confusion and sounds of destruction, I hear a quieter version of the rumbling charge of the enemy cavalry, and a single, smaller animal comes charging out of the clouds of dust, the rider peering frantically back and forth and screaming obscenities in a language I don't recognize. Then he seems to notice us. Mordakka levels the Raildakkas, and he brings up a vicious-looking pintle-mounted gun of some kind. I step between them, arms outstretched.

"Wait! Hold on!"

He hesitates, fortunately for me.

"You... you must be the chaotic taint the astropaths picked up! What have you done? What horror have you unleashed upon us all?"

"Wait... me? I thought that thing was one of yours!"

"Non... no. It was. But not anymore! It's some kind of ancient technology! From the Dark Age!"

"_This is bad. This is very bad."_

He starts at Root's voice, but gamely continues.

"The Mechanicus seems to have a better idea of the situation, but they're not here yet."

He looks back into the haze, wincing at a tremendous multiple explosion and a booming roar of

"**Freedom Is Non-Negotiable!"**

Then he turns back, obviously struggling internally.

"This machine is causing terrible losses to both our forces. Though it pains me to say it-"

"_Truce? Done. Let's kill this thing!"_

I nod to Mordakka.

"Do it!"

He seems to accept me as being in charge.

"Boyz! Don't shoot da Humies! Shoot da big purple killy fing!"

In response, there's another titanic volley from the _Kingdakka_'s batteries, the streams of railgun fire blowing away the haze of dust, and revealing a perfectly unscathed _Gospel Prime_ standing in a field of mutilated tanks and fortifications. It starts at the impact, domed head swivelling around to look at the massive ship that is facing it down.

"**Obstruction Detected! Composition: Adamantium Alloy supplanted by Electromagnetic Void Shielding! Armaments: Error! Registry Unknown! Multiple Kinetic Energy Emitters Detected! Revising Field Stratagems: Deactivation. Probability Of Mission Hindrance: Zero Percent! Commencing Shutdown!"**

The massive glowing... thing... on its chest begins to shine even brighter, and, in a flare of brilliant blue fire, every gun on the _Kingdakka_ falls silent.

"**Pacifism Is The First Article Of My Faith And The Last Article Of My Creed!"**

Mordakka shakes his vox frantically.

"Zoggit! Wut jus' 'appened! Answer, dammit!"

Atinboro's response comes back thin and panicky.

"Nuffin's workin', boss! Main core jus' went ta standby! Systems is running', but we'ze can't fiyah anyfing!"

Θ

Bérthier, apparently safe in the company of the Greenskin and the... human, turned in his saddle, surveying the scene of destruction. There were... Yes! He saw a few Coeurl, still up and moving, staying well away from the machine and out of its line of sight. There were also a few of the Orks war machines, also apparently trying to do the same.

"Tout le monde! Concentrez sur cette machine! Les Orks ne sont pas hostiles! "

He dimly heard the lead Greenskin relay a similar order, albeit in its unintelligible patois. Then the vox chirped as it registered an incoming signal.

"Here we come, Maréchal!"

The _Gosple Prime _staggered as three multi-ton object hit it while travelling at a little over the speed of sound. Their treaded feet screaming on the larger machine's tough skin, the three _Sturmjagers_ used its wide back as a lunch platform, propelling themselves into the airspace directly above its dome-encased cranium.

"Positron Cannons! Activate!"

Three wavering beams of antiparticles hit the Titan's dome head-on, sending it staggering, roaring in agony.

"**Equality Will Never Be Defeated!"**

As the three Knights landed lightly, verniers flaring, the _Gospel_'s supercollider cannon activated, a stream of subatomic particles, the very building blacks of matter, turning _Sturmjager _3 into an equivalent mass of antimatter. There was a brief burst of blinding light, then an immense shockwave. The two remaining _Sturmjagers _were already moving, outrunning the wave of energy then tearing back into the skies, moving in opposite directions, forcing their opponent to focus on two targets at once. There was another flare of brilliant energy, another unearthly concussive blast, and only one _Sturmjager _was left.

"You may have destroyed my machines, you INSOLENT WHELP, but you have NOT destroyed ME!"

Somehow managing to dodge a stream of antiparticles moving at superluminal speeds, the intrepid Magos collided with the front of the _Gospel_'s faceplate, a manually overloaded positron rifle clutched in its servomanipulators.

"I AM MAGOS GYTH HETHRHODIN! I AM A SPARK OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE DARKNESS! I CREATED YOU, MACHINE, AND I WILL END YOU EVEN IF IT COSTS ME MY LIFE!"

"**I-"**

FZZZAAAAAAP.

The air exploded in a cloud of electrical reactions that was strong enough to send static bolts arcing off of the _Kingdakka_'s hull several hundred meters away. When the smoke had cleared, there was nothing left of the _Sturmjager_ or the Magos, but there was a considerable hole in the _Gospel_'s dome, and scorch marks on its purple-skinned head.

"**Warning! External Hull Damage Detected! Repairing"**

Several new plates of armour slotted in place, repairing the gap as if it had never even existed.

"**I Still Live! Freedom Still Lives!"**

Θ

"Empéreur aidez-nous. Aidez-nous tous."

"_Sebell, the TAchimera. This might work!"_

"All right then."

I raise one wrist, the armour there mutated into a simple vox device.

"TAchimera, Emergency protocols online. You are authorized to use Lament!"

A ways down the hill, the TAchimera turns to look at me, waving and bouncing cheerfully up and down, oblivious to the carnage around it. Its overenthusiastic voice crackles over the vox.

"Really!? Hooray! Configuration: Lament confirmed! Commencing expansion!"

Then the air is filled with chains.

Θ

Hearing the explosions behind them, Irohov pressed on with greater speed, urging even more power out of the scratch-built rocket boots. Azul kept pace with his bouncing strides, never lagging or slowing. The Flamaz moved in complete silence as a unified whole, their only sound the crunching hiss of their cybernetic legs as they hit the reddish soil. It was late afternoon, moving towards evening, and the brilliant sun was sinking towards the horizon, turning the already reddish wasteland even redder. It was not a ray of sunshine, however, that speared out from an abandoned outbuilding on the outskirts of the Titan base and knocked a Flama clean out of the sky. Montag yelped in astonishment, turning his gun on the enemy position and lobbing burning chunks of thermite.

"Boyz! 'Ostiles! Attack!"

The air was suddenly filled with cones of energy and balls of burning chemicals, as Irohov dropped vertically, taking cover in the ruins of yet another abandoned shack. They were being fired upon from two sides, several lines of outbuildings apparently crammed full of soldiers. A pahalanx of Edelweiss troopers was moving forwards under mantlet cover, supported by two heavy melta teams. Irohov leaned out from behind a low wall, snapping off a few quick shots with his Strela, before being forced back by the volume of fire coming their way. Then he saw Azul. She was standing out of cover, head bowed, apparently in prayer.

"_Apoli_! Azul! Get over here! Are you insane?!"

She looked at him, and despite the helmet she was wearing he could almost feel the look of deranged pity emanating from her cold, inhuman eyes.

"I am not insane. I am _faithful_."

Tabard flaring around her, she knocked the overengineered heels of her boots together, the panels of armour folding away to reveal a powerful rocket booster on each ankle. Kicking into the air, she flew straight up, Nnoitra's two halves clutched in her hands, arms outstretched to each sides. Then she screamed, a cry audible to all those around despite the heavy gunfire.

"Emperor save me! Nnoitra, _SCREAM!_"

Lightning crackled around her as the teeth on the chainblades spun faster than Irohov would have thought possible, spraying out streams of sparks and... blood? Then, without warning, two immense blocks of stone pushed their way out of the ground, their rough-cut, unpatterned surfaces glimmering ruddily in the light. They rose to where Azul hovered, then suddenly rushed together, crushing her like in insect in a vice. There was a spattering of blood, and the two stones rolled over in the air, blood trickling across their surfaces. But the flow of blood was accelerating; streams of ichor curled across the surface of the rock looking for all the world like horribly swollen blood veins. Chunks of rock flaked off, revealing a rough humanoid form; the lower half of the monolith fell away in a shower of rubble, leaving Azul's apparently unharmed legs dangling limply in the air, rockets deactivated. Then the stone shuddered, and something _terrible_, like an animated statue, pulled itself free. It was vaguely reptilian, a veined stone monstrosity, covering Azul's upper body like a second skin. The blunt head had only one eye; it had the same pupil, carved in the stone, but glistening with malevolent hostility, as Azul's eyes. The other eye was a black, gaping pit in the rock, blood boiling in its depths. The back of the head was a crest of bloodstained, carved feathers, swaying back and forth slightly as the beast moved. The arms were long and gorilla-like, ending in blunt fingers, the forearms grotesquely stretched.

Sinking on a column of newly-reactivated flame, the beast landed, then, without warning, leapt at the nearest concentration of enemy troopers, pitifully small rocket boots propelling its grossly over proportioned upper body at impossible speeds. The arms lanced out, bludgeoning several soldiers to death in one fell sweep, and the mouth opened, revealing a gaping cavity packed with jagged teeth. Biting down on the crushed bodies of the troopers and ignoring the frantic incoming fire the horrible thing seemed to almost enjoy the slaughter it had caused. Then, without warning, it reared back, mouth open in a serpentine grin. With a crack, its lower jaw split along the center, revealing a second set of inwards-facing teeth. The arms each split into three, an extra joint developing at the shoulder as they dangled away from its body, suspended on looping tendrils of bloodied muscle. The forearms flexed inwards, rows of bloodied chainsword teeth tearing through their skin, and Nnoitra _screamed_.

"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR HIS THRONE!"

And the killing began in earnest.

The TAchimera is surrounded in a bolus of chains; writhing and interlocking like metallic snakes, they slowly begin to take on some semblance of an ordered shape, more and more of them sprouting as we watch. Two immense fetters shoot skyways, hoisting the TAchimera's boxy form into the sky. Its grapnel guns twitch again, and another gout of metal wraps itself around the two supporting chains, forming two shapes which vaguely resemble legs. The knot of chains curls around the machine, creating an impenetrable shell of layered, shifting metal. Two more thick chains, as wide across as a smallish motorcycle, rocket skyward, and, in turn, are coated with their own smaller layer of protective links. The TAchimera's three eyes, the only parts of it that are still exposed, flare into a brilliant red-orange glow, casting three visible beams of light around it. The top of its central torso explodes, creating a head of sorts; it's more of a writhing forest of spiked chains, grinding against each other with a soft whispering sound. The metallic monstrosity continues to grow, new chains sprouting and interlocking, until, with a grinding crunch, the whirring sea of chains stops; what was once the TAchimera is now a Titan-sized figure, its overly-long left arm ending in a grossly elongated flail of spiked chains, the right ending in a huge bundle of intertwined links. It begins to stomp towards the purple war machine, clattering as it goes, and I hear the TAchimera's voice in my ear, crackling over the vox and still unnervingly out of proportion with its grotesque form.

"Lament configuration set, Mister Vivat! I'm engaging now!"

It swings its left arm, moving deceptively slowly, and the limb stretches, new links of chain sliding outwards and locking into place. The enemy Titan tries to block the blow, the TAchimera's grotesque appendage jinks in mid-flight, curling past the machine's outstretched arms and surrounding its face with a huge knot of writhing metal.

_The Lament configuration was what made the TAchimera units so incredibly versatile; simply by altering the runic sorting algorithms on the warp portals that functioned as grapnel launchers, and boosting the power to the spells they used for controlling chains, they could produce a near-infinite amount of chains for use as weapons, allowing them to easily rival Titans, with the added bonus of incredible structural regeneration._

"**The Chains Of Tyranny Cannot Bind Me!"**

The Titan's chest... thing... erupts into light, and a large chunk of chain disappears in a clap of thunder only to be replaced by even more chains, curling around the TAchimera's opponent, dragging it down. The Lament's outline has become indistinct; it's slowly enveloping the Titan, its protean form allowing it to deform and lock around the purple-coated armour of its enemy. There's another flare of light, and another layer of chains dissolves to nothingness, but the TAchimera is relentless. There are chains with links the size of tanks pouring out from the smaller clump of chains that is its body, closing tighter and tighter around the Titan. The two machines overbalance, crashing to the ground with an earthshaking thud.

"**Warning! Critical Encumbrance Detected! Engaging Particle Accelerator Countermeasures!"**

The TAchimera's chains collapses inwards, and, after a moment's pause, the Titan reappears, hovering in the air directly above the Chaotic construct, both arms pointed straight down, the spheres of energy at their tips shimmering menacingly.

"**The Last Domino Falls Here!"**

The TAchimera's chains begin to rise like the arms of some horrific metal octopus.

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Mister Titan-who-must-die!"

Then everything explodes.

Θ

Nnoitra landed heavily, its stony skin spattered with blood. Its arms had completely separated, two limbs becoming six chainsword-lined pincers, flexing back and forth convulsively. It prepared for another leap, the rocket boosters on its feet flaring, when three consecutive bursts from an Edelweiss _halleberde_ struck it head-on, sending it staggering.

"This is not sufficient! I need MORE!"

It hunched over, closing into a foetal position, as a crack opened up in its back Azul's helmetless head protruding from the gore-stained stone like a sentient tumour.

"Our Emperor, who art on Terra, hallowed be thy name..."

"There isn't enough blood, Azul..."

"Thy kingdom come, they will be done, on Terra as it is in the Empire..."

"You know what needs to happen..."

"Give us this day our daily bread, and destroy the heretic... a-amen. No. NO!"

Another crack opened in its skin, and a second head protruded. Irohov, with a growing sense of horror, realized that he _recognized_ it. An unshaven chin, a topknot, now caked with dried blood, a single cybernetic eye with a scar down the right side of the face...

Rojo Osavin's severed head turned skywards, and moaned.

"You ATE me!"

Azul screamed in enraged anguish.

"KILL! KILL! KILL!"

The heads withdrew within the body, and Nnoitra stretched languorously, ignoring the volleys of lasbolts that were scorching its skin. Then it turned to face the nearest clump of enemy soldiers, and a lance of high-pressure superheated blood spat from its empty eye sockets, instantly parboiling the unfortunate Imperials. It leapt, six arms maiming six surviving troopers as two flaming rocket-booted legs crushed the corpses of the fallen underfoot.

"Much better!"

Though fascinated by the grim spectacle that was Azul at her most psychotically warped, Irohov's attention, or the part of it that was not occupied by shooting down anyone who got near him with his Strela, was drawn by a commotion from a different quadrant of the battlefield. Nearly a dozen of the hundred or so Flamaz were engaging one target with their phosphorus cannons, and apparently failing to kill it. Dropping another approaching Edelweiss with a neat shot through his ear as he stood in a building eight blocks down, Irohov turned to focus on the melee. His view through the scope was indistinct at first, but as he focused, he saw... a Commissar, Eviscerator drawn, neatly batting away balls of molten fuel that should have cleanly melted through her sword. As one Flama got too close, her sword arm flicked out, a blade that she should not have been able to wield with one hand neatly decapitating the unfortunate Ork. His companions apparently took this as their cure to fight; they charged in, swinging the hatchets that were their melee weapon of choice. There was a flurry of blades, and the Orks were down, most of them eviscerated in a display of swordswomanship the likes of which Irohov had never seen.

Then his view of the scene was blocked by a large, moving object. He lowered the rifle. It was Azul. Or, rather, Nnoitra. Galloping at full speed towards the Imperial, occasionally leaping into the air and roaring, relying more on its six insect like arms than Azul's legs for locomotion. There was something wrong, though. Irohov could see chunks of rock flaking away, the veins that held the chaotic stone together drying up and cracking. With a twitch, Azul's legs began running normally as Nnoitra's stone shell collapsed, showers of grey stone momentarily obscuring the Katyushan. Then Irohov could see her; running wildly, the chainblades that were Nnoitra spinning in her hands, armour dripping ichor... but there was none of the violet lightning or bursts of screaming that had marked her combat before. It was as if Nnoitra had been suppressed completely, with only Azul's berserker rage carrying her forwards. As she neared the Commisar, she threw herself into a flying punch, a whirring chainblade punching directly towards her enemy's exposed face. Then there was the flash of a chainsword, and... was that a flicker of golden flames? Azul was thrown aside, bleeding heavily from a rent in her armour. She hit the ground hard, and, after a weak attempt to get back upright, lay still. Flicking her long golden hair over one shoulder, the Commissar turned to the flickering lights of the battle off in the distance, and began to walk with a slow, measured pace towards the _Kingdakka_.

Θ

Everything has ground to a halt, save for the titanic battle between the TAchimera and the Titan. Neither side is gaining any advantage; for every massive clump of chain that the purple machine blasts away with its incredible weapons, the TAchimera has brought it stumbling, cracking its limbs through sheer mass. It's a stalemate in the most perfect sense; machine against machine, neither side relenting, each regenerating any damage done to it, trading godlike blows over and over again.

"_This isn't working."_

"You can say that again. Mordakka, any ideas? The Imperials don't seem to be a threat anymore."

From what I can tell, the Imperial commander has ridden off, unnoticed by all, and the few surviving enemy cavalry beasts are staying out of the way.

"Ah, zog. I wuz 'opin ta save dis fer a reel 'mergency, but if yez say so..."

Mordakka deactivates the Raildakkas, reaching up to flick a small switch on the tubular device mounted opposite his Morta. With a click, it reveals itself to be a simple las designator, shining a green dot of light on the ground where it is pointed. Next, Mordakka pulls out a bundle of wires, power cells and antennae, hooked up to a simple pistol grip.

"_What're you going to do with a targeter and a vox activation array... oh."_

"Yez might wont ta get yer masheen out a da way first, yeah?"

"TAchimera, cloak and disengage! Get out of there now!"

The disappointed reply comes as the chains begin to collapse.

"Awwww.... really? But I was just getting started!"

The Titan is left, apparently bewildered, up to its knees in a huge pile of useless chains.

"Are you clear of the area?"

"I'm nearing the edge of the defensive line, Mister Vivat!"

_For all its weirdness, the TAchimera sure could move fast._

Scant minutes later, with the Titan still bellowing about searching for targets, the TAchimera flickers into visibility next to me.

"Whoa! Don't sneak up like that!"

"Sorry, Mister Vivat! But I'm here!"

"_Do whatever you're gonna do, Mordakka!"_

The Warboss tweaks something on the targeter, and grunts, apparently satisfied. Then he raises the pistol device, pointing it at the distant Titan.

"Waaaghblasta! Activate!"

He pulls the trigger, and reality gets bent.


	6. Fighting With Orbital Fire

The Proteus armour tries to bleep a reality-distortion warning, but it is cut off and descends into a high-pitched series of wobbling harmonics as the world _blurs_. I feel blood spurt violently from my nose, and become faintly aware of Root making pained "gnnnnyerrr, gnyer" noises. What has really caught my attention is the hole in the fabric of reality, easily two hundred meters across, that floats above our heads like a malevolent eye. It is perfectly circular, and, squinting over the haze in my vision from sudden blood loss and the plumes of unlight it is releasing, I see a ring of small, crudely-constructed metal devices are holding it open.

"Oh, Tzeentch, Mordakka, what have you _done_!"

The light dims suddenly, and a huge lump of metal pushes its way out of the warp. It is an indescribable conglomeration of Orky technology, massive bolts of energy crackling across its surface, gears the size of houses churning with a noise like a million eggs being broken at once. Within the unholy mechanical hulk that I'm guessing is the Waaaghblasta, I notice a familiar shape. Or, rather, three framiliar shapes. Three fully-deployed Waaghkannons, pointing towards a central core. Mordakka raises his control device a second time, and turns a switch.

"'Nitializin main firin' sekwince!"

The central core of metal collapses inwards becoming a seething sphere of psionic energy. The _First Gospel_ releases a burst of quantum energy, but it is swept away by the sheer rushing force of will that powers the Waaaghblasta. I'm seeing the Waaagh- the concentrated will of all Orkyness- in its purest state.

"**Error! Relatvistic Binding Mismatches Detected! ****Err- Errrrrorrr! Non-eu-eu-c-c-c-lidean Temporal Relalalativissstics Det/Det/Detected! ****C-C-ommmmmp-p-pensating! "**

The Titan releases a burst of incandescent sparks, all of which are rapidly sucked in by the slowly-expanding core of the Orkish superweapon. I can feel an unpleasant vibration in the pit of my stomach; it's an incredibly loud sound, but at a pitch too low for anyone to hear. Then time seems to slow as I notice the first beam.

Θ

"Is the target lock on the rogue Titan confirmed?"

"Lock confirmed, Fleet Captain."

"And the unknown energy signature?"

"Within blast radius."

"Excellent. Commence firing solution. All weapons hot."

Θ

It's a spot of red light, faintly visible on the gadgetry-encrusted hide of the Waaaghkannon. It's getting brighter and brighter, and seems to be... pulsing? Then I realize. The thought flashes through my mind too fast for words. Las? Not powerful enough. Targetting beacon? Too strong? Prefire anti-blooming laser for orbital bomba-

The air around me shrieks as it is suddenly heated to well over two hundred degrees Celsius. The Proteus armour snaps an opaque shield across my unprotected face just before a pulse of ultraviolet light has enough time to burn off my skin. Then comes the concussive boom, and the heat wave hits me, scorching my skin even through a layer of heat-nullifying runic wards on my armour. I hit, the ground, thrown back by a second shockwave, then a third, then a fourth... time stretches to infinity. There is no pain, only a sort of muffled whiteness. I dimly count thirty-six orbital las strikes, before all is silent save for the screeching crack of collapsing metal. Then feeling returns. I stumble back to my feet, ignoring the agonising burns covering most of the front of my body, and remove the face-shield, staring in horrified awe at the grim spectacle in front of me. Gone is the Waaaghblasta, and the whole to the Warp. They have been replaced by a steaming crater in the ground, too deep for me to see the bottom, its edges still glowing where the soil has been cauterised into glass. The air has cooled, but the heat radiating from the point of impact feels like a furnace. The remains of the _First Gospel_ stand at the edge of the crater, a fused, melted corpse, arms outstretched, its seemingly-invincible shielding obliterated by a pulse of energy strong enough to crack a planet's crust.

Θ

"Drop-pods, Launched! Banks one... through ten... fifteen... thirty... thirty-five... All banks cleared. Fighter pods launched. Bomber pod launched. Command ships loaded and ready. Heavy lift carriers are loaded, fuelling at 95%."

"Excellent. Commence signal broadcast."

Θ

The vox on my wrist chirps intercepting an incoming encrypted signal and cutting out Mordakka's anguished, impotent growling. The sound is loud and clear, a single booming voice with a familiar guttural accent.

"_Katyusha_ on station. How may we assist?"

Θ

Irohov dashed wildly between two abandoned buildings, unpleasantly aware of the pops and crunches of the discharge of Edelweiss weapons all around him. The Flamaz were doing their jobs well, he had to admit. After their initial losses, they'd begun to move rapidly throughout the enemy positions, striking and retreating before the ponderous, if deadly, weapons of their Imperial enemies could be brought to bear. Right now, however, his attention was focussed on Azul. It wasn't that he was desperate to help her, what with the whole daemonic possession issue, but he felt a certain obligation towards his former subordinate. And if what Nnoitra had said was true... about her brother... Well, she needed support. As he got closer and closer, picking his way between pockets of cover and occasionally snapping off a few hastily-aimed Strela shots, he realized that she still appeared to be moving. He needed to get closer, but the Edelweiss had begun to redeploy their heavy weapons. The only clear path towards where the fanatic lay was covered by one of the heavy grenade-launcher positions that his enemies seemed to favour. Fortunately, they hadn't noticed him, but he was faced with a conundrum. If he were to aim with the Strela, the contrails of the rocket rifle's fire would expose him, and at such short range there was no guarantee that a Strela shot would even harm the heavy weapon team's carapace armour. Moving back was out of the question; too much risk of being cut off by the advancing Imperials. The Flamaz were off doing what they did best, and his vox didn't seem to be working. That left only one option. Reaching inside the short cape of his uniform, Irohov released the catch on a cluster of Black Promethium satchel charges. Carefully placing three of the deadly canisters of flammable gas on a nearby broken windowsill, he unshouldered his Burst Hammer. The grenade launcher was nestled in the broken wall of a hab complex down the street. Irohov was on the ground floor of what appeared to be a simple eatery, two doors down. It was too far to throw a timed charge... so he would have to hit them instead.

He'd seen the manoeuvre done a few times, but never tried it himself. He'd always preferred to stay away from the front lines. His new turn as a commando for the forces of Chaos was not his idea of the ideal job, but he wasn't one to complain. Leaning out around the window frame, he took a quick judge at the distances... which meant... He set the head of the hammer on the ground, extending the handle with a flick of his wrist as he placed his back against the side of the sill, facing away from the window. Alligning the hammer's head with the three bundled charges, he made a few mental calculations, and... pressed the trigger. With a soft _whoosh_ and a grunt of exertion from the Triarch, the hammer swung upwards, hitting the satchel charges dead on and sending them whirling out into space. With any luck... yes! There was a clunk, the sound of muffled swearing, a roar of ignition as the force of the impact cracked the casings of the canisters, screaming, and then silence. Irohov vaulteded neatly through the now badly scorched windowsill, noting with grim satisfaction the smouldering, acid-etched crater in the wall of the hab complex. It wasn't really that he was a pyromaniac, per se. He certainly didn't think of himself as one. It was more a matter of using what killed one's enemies the fastest, and flame weapons seemed to fit that category.

He reached Azul, in time to see her armour crack like thin ice as the two blocks of stone that marked her change into Nnoitra crushed her like an insect. The daemon pulled itself up, shaking its lizard-insect head as if to clear lingering drowsyness. It noticed Irohov, and gave a curt nod.

"Triarch."

Irohov approached closer, checking for hostile movement nearby, but also noticed the large pool of blood around where Azul's body had been.

"Are you- Is she-?"

"She will recover. The weapon that the Commissar wields left her severely wounded, but with my help she will heal."

"What's the plan?"

"Continue with our original mission. We must get inside the enemy base, then locate and destroy the... STC records, causing as much damage as possible on the way."

"What happened to her-you? How did the commissar take you down so easily?"

"She is a blank. I was unable to maintain control for a few seconds. The resulting psychological shock slowed Azul's reaction times considerably."

"Well, she's not our problem anymore."

"Indeed. Let us proceed, then."

The Bloodletter kick-started Azul's rocket boots, hurtling into the air. Six arms outstretched, it punched through the wall of a nearby building, on a direct path to the distant, looming presence of the Titan base. Unsheathing his flamer pistols, Irohov leapt into the air and followed, narrowly avoiding banging his head on the top of the hole as he passed it.

"_Apoli_. I'll never get used to this."

Θ

Captain Konstantin Ferokitsov of the Imperial Navy Grand Battleship _Katyusha_ leaned back in his command couch, grinning contentedly.

"Lieutenant Krikalov, what is the status on our firing solution?"

He didn't speak directly to the man; his voice would not have carried in the eight-storey tall spherical bridge. His station was directly at the center of the transparent command bubble, affording an excellent view down the ten-kilometer-long bulk of his ship. As he spoke, a small Mind Interface Unit interpreted his intentions for the recipient of the message, an even smaller vox array picking up his words and transmitting them to the fire control and tactical station three stories below him and ten meters to his left. Krikalov's return voice crackled in his ear.

"Targetted and plotted. Underside torpedo arrays loaded with high-explosive penetrator warheads. Topside arrays loaded with chlorine trifluoride and Black Promethium mix."

"Good. Drop-pod status?"

The reply came from the Planetary Operations station.

"Estimated time of impact two minutes. Fighter pods have ETI three minutes, bomber pod ETI seven minutes."

"ArCo status?"

Triarch Koshkin's voice came back, broadcast from his Assault-variant _Shuvghovhod_ siege crawler.

"The Katyushan Third Support Army is ready to drop on your command, Captain. The engineers say we're good to go."

"Excellent, Mikhail. Good hunting!"

"_Da, da_. You just sit up here taking pot shots while we do all the work."

"Heavy lifters, launch!"

"Lifters away, Captain"

Almost two kilometres below him, huge bay doors opened in the side of the _Katyusha_, deploying dozens of heavy-lift transport craft. Inside their cavernous cargo bays were the entirety of the Katyushan First and Third Support Armies, as well as the portion of the Second Suppoirt Army that was not currently in drop pods; a grand total of only three thousand men and women.

"Tactical control, commence torpedo bombardment. Underside bays only. Standard one-two volley. Fire."

And, well below him, one thousand torpedoes in one thousand tubes activated, their internal guidance systems directing them towards a single target on the ground. The _Kingdakka_.

Θ

_And now, an excerpt from _Red Sky in the Morning: The History of the Katyushan Space Program_, by Jayms B. Mhijenner. Chapter 7, the _Katyusha_ and the Grand Battleship Program._

By far the largest Imperial-made ship produced without the involvement of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the completion of the _Katyusha_ marked the beginning of the Katyushan domination of space. Approximately 10 kilometers long, 1.85 in height and 2 in width, it was designed as a general combat vehicle, intended to function in nearly any combat situation. Combining the tremendously heavy firepower of a battleship, the orbital support capabilities of a Battle Barge, and the internal supply and repair facilities of a stationary installation, the _Katyusha_'s true purpose was to single-handedly wage a crusade without support vessels or escorts of any kind. In this, it was an unbridled success. Thanks to innovations in automation and servitor technology (which the Adeptus Mechanicus conveniently ignored), it needed a crew of only 8000, with most of the ship's hull being taken up by the largest fusion engines ever constructed by man, as well as cargo bays capable of holding vessels of up to cruiser-class...

What truly made it remarkable was its weapons systems: a 2000-tube cogitator-controlled autoloading frontal torpedo bank made it nearly invincible in orbital bombardment, while 36 lascannons of a calibre larger than anything previously developed allowed it to rival the lighter classes of Necrontyr ships in combat. The development of what are now known as _Lucifer_-model las superguns remains a closely kept secret, and many suspect the involvement of non-Imperial and possibly non-human parties in the process.


	7. What Goes Up

"Dose... dose barsterds! Dose zoggin' Humies. Dey… dey blew it up! Gork an' Mork, dey blew evreyfing up!"

Mordakka slams his fists into the ground, throwing his head back and howling with pain and rage.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!"

Then he seems to compose himself, still breathing heavily, and grabs his vox.

"Squigwood, we'ze takin' off. Let's show dose bloddy Humies dat wen you 'it an Ork, 'e 'its back!"

Θ

The torpedoes tore through the upper atmosphere, rocket engines screaming in a wailing chorus of doom. Their internal sensors, registering that the missiles had reached their optimum dispersal point, triggered a series of explosive bolts mounted around their warheads. As the panelling of their outer shells tore away, internal hydraulics within the missiles launched a series of unguided high-explosive rockets, leaving their now-lightened carriers to streak towards their target unhindered. There were now 4000 rocket-propelled projectiles plummeting towards the _Kingdakka_. In Katyushan gunnery circles, there was an informal nickname for swarm torpedoes; Doom Blossoms. The Orks were about to experience this firsthand.

Θ

As we rush back towards the ship, Squigwood's voice registers over the vox, calm and collected as ever.

"Boss, sensor controls are pickin up a lotta missiles heading this way. I'ze gonna activate th' antimissile system, yeah?"

"Do it!"

Θ

Dozens of small hatches in the hull of the _Kingdakka_ swung open on ramshackle hydraulics, revealing a series airtight armourcrys bubbles. Within each bubble was a gretchin, and a long heavy lasrifle, its thick barrel protruding through an airtight slot in the transparent plating. The Gretchin, permanently and irrevocably addicted to Fightan Jooce, had one all-important idea drilled into their drug-addled brains: kill rokkitz, get da Jooce. Beady eyes peering through scopes, they searched the skies, firing at anything that looked vaguely like a missile or rocket. A simple light sensor on the scope registered the explosion of a destroyed missile, pumping a small dose of Fightan Jooce directly into the Gretchin's veins. The more missiles they destroyed, the more hyperactive they became, and the more efficient they became. It was a good system, but it wasn't enough.

A storm of missiles fell at well over the speed of sound, a pathetic few of their number picked out of the air by furious las fire.

Θ

"Yez fink yez can kill me wif _rokkits_? SUCK ME GUBBINZ', RUNTIE HUMIES! WAAAGHKANNON! BREAKAH! FIYAH!"

Though he has not called into his vox, or thumbed any triggers on his gear, the _Kingdakka_'s second Waaaghkannon responds to his voice and fires.

DAKKA

DAKKA

DAKKA

But the gun behaves differently than usual. Instead of firing off a single massive fist of energy, its beam seems to diverge; suddenly the sky is an incandescent grid of green energy, thousands of beams of power connecting and annihilating every single missile that I can see. The air rumbles with the force of the detonation, but the Waaaghkannon isn't done yet; the tiny offshoot beams recoalese, the reformed fist of energy rising into the stratosphere and out of sight.

"_Could it do that before?"_

"N-no. I don't think so."

"Stop yer yappin an get onna bloody ship! Iz flyan time!"

Θ

Irohov and Nnoitra ran through the ruined city, leaping around (and, in one particularly harrowing case, over), the scattered groups of Edelweiss they came across. They didn't seem to be moving, or attempting to regroup; they just held their positions, as if they were waiting for something. Irohov was worried. His worry was only intensified as Nnoitra skidded to a halt, staring skywards, his multipartite mouth hanging open.

"Look."

"_Apoli_."

Drop pods. Thirty-five. Closing fast. And that circular shape...

"Nnoitra. We need to get under cover. Now."

And the air exploded.

Θ

They were called Hailstorm Pods for a reason; designed to both clear a landing zone and provide cover for drop-pod soldiers, the missile pods mounted to the outside of the drop-pods whirred to life. Spinning rapidly, they dispersed a wide spread of downwards-aimed rockets, the recoil serving to slow the pod enough that it would not get caught in the shockwave.

It rained ordinance, the frag rockets exploding with hollow _pops_ , annihilating the abandoned structures around them with ease. The drop pods landed softly, on a field of rubble that was abandoned save for a single oddly organic-looking rock.

Θ

Nnoitra rose to his undersized feet, maw gaping as he retched. Leaning forwards, he spat a battered, ichor-coated Irohov onto the ground.

"Why-?"

"We will never speak of this again. Now. Our enemy approaches."

Stumbling to his feet, Irohov glanced at the grounded drop pods, in time to see their hatch doors pop open, and power-armoured troops pile forth. He knew that armour. That insignia. Those weapons. The Katyushan 2nd Sputnik Guard Support Army, Energia Division. His kinsmen. His friends. His allies. His... enemies?

"No. No. I can't do this. I can't."

"Then so be it. BLOOD!"

There were five Energias per pod, and three pods had landed nearby, meaning that the odds against Nnoitra were fifteen to one. He didn't seem to care. Leaping into the center of the group, he ignored the flamers levelled against them, the scorching promethium coursing over his stony skin. Two of his six arms reached out, snagging a pair of unfortunate Energias, and neatly sawed them in half. Balancing on the other two arms, Nnoitra did a wild horizontal flip, a lance of coagulated gore from his empty eye socket spattering the remains of the three remaining soldiers across the rubble-strewn ground. Then, turning to their drop-pod, he lifted it bodily, preparing to throw it and crush the next group. Which was when a barrage of rockets designed to destroy main battle tanks blew him to smithereens.

Rumbling out of the smoke came an Assault _Shuvghovhod_¸ two frontal omni-directional wheels mounted on thick hydraulic pylons pulling a massive armoured bunker mounted on a skimmer base. The two missile turrets on the spine of the bunker swivelled skywards, their tubes still smoking. As a ragged cheer went up from the surviving Katyushans, a thickly-accented voice boomed over the war machine's vox speaker.

"How are you liking me now, daemon?"

"Well played!"

With a horrific tearing noise, the destroyed bodies of the Katyushan soldiers were forced together into a pulpy mass, which slowly morphed into what appeared to be a stone statue of a lizard.

"It's going to take far more than pretty explosions to kill me!"

A shot from the _Shuvghovhod_'s chin-mounted autocannon knocked him off his feet.

"Well how about that then, warpspawn?"

Θ

Conjuring a set of straps out of thin air, I firmly strap myself onto the crude stool that counts as a 'seat' on the _Kingdakka_'s bridge. Mordakka drops into a larger, and much more comfortable-looking, command chair. Squigwood's in the piloting station and the thin, war paint-clad Atinboro is in the gunnery station, hands already quivering over several different triggers.

"Awright boyz! 'ERE WE GO! WAAAAAAGH!"

And out of the corner of my eye, I see five red points of light sink into the shadows behind a roof stanchion.

Θ

"Damage report! What in the Emperor's name just hit us?"

There were a few seconds of frantic silence as the officer consulted his readouts.

"Sir... I have no idea. It bypassed our shielding completely, penetrated the hull, and simultaneously knocked out all of our ground targeting stations. We're incapable of performing orbital bombardments of any kind. Hold on."

"Emergency stations! Full power to void shielding! Get damage control crews on task. I want orbital bombardment capabilities up _now_!"

"Sir... Incoming! Enemy cruiser, power readings similar to those we destroyed earlier! It's Orkish, sir!"

"Scramble fighters. Lascannons to full power, cycle for rapid-fire. Load torpedoes with penetrator warheads. Target and fire full barrage when ready."

Θ

"Oh Tzeentch. That thing's _huge_."

"Sod it. Atinb-"

"HA-SHWAAAAAAAAGH!"

The ship shook, the main display screen lighting up with dozens of railgun plasma contrails, flak bursts, and torpedo launches.

A quiet voice rang in my mind.

"Whelp, here I go. Good luck out there, eh?"

Θ

_Lascannon Turret 17, Gunnery deck 12, aboard the _Katyusha_..._

Crewman Weirov leaned over the coolant coil, wrench in hand.

"Now then, little vane, will you come free? Ah yes. Yes you will."

There was the slightest of noises behind him, and the screaming began. It lasted for several minutes. By the time his fellow crewmen had found him, Weirov had already gouged out his eyes with the wrench. He sat on the deck, humming tunelessly, and staring blindly at the words he had drawn on the deck.

we are

we are

we are

we are

HERE.

By the time they noticed the five red dots suspended in shadow above them, it was too late.

Θ

Trading blows and insults, the Bloodletter and the _Shuvghovhod_ danced back and forth. Every time Nnoitra got close enough to land a blow, fire from the war machine's many, many fire ports would push him back, although he seemed unphased by the damage. It was a stalemate in the truest sense of the word.

Irohov dropped to his knees as the team of Energias approached. Their armour was... unfamiliar. A newer design. Less plating, more flexibility, probably. But they all bore the emblem of the 2nd. The footsloggers, the best infantrymen Katyusha could field. As they drew closer, heavy _Autostrela_ guns at the ready, Irohov saw that their leader bore the triple-ring insignia. He stopped suddenly, and Irohov heard a muffled gasp.

_The following conversation was entirely in Katyushan, but I've taken the liberty of translating it._

"I-Irohvov. No. It can't be. This must be some Chaotic trick!"

It was the voice of Lexandar Nevski, Triarch of the Second. An old ally.

"It's me, Nevski. In the flesh."

Drawing closer, but still not lowering his weapon, Nevski crouched down a way away from him.

"Ivan... you died! The entire Thirteenth was killed when the Orks cracked Namaskar."

"Oh? So that's what you were told? I didn't die, Lexandar. I just... changed sides."

"You... a traitor? A heretic?"

Irohov smiled bitterly.

"Not by my own choosing. I would do anything to turn things back the way they were."

"You were loyal, steadfast... a servant of the Emperor tried and true! I can't believe this!"

"Lexandar, not even His Majesty can help me now. Make this easy and kill me now. Please. Before things just get worse."

"I-Ivan..."

"Exterminate."

Θ

As she rose from the mutilated corpse of another crewman, Shri Pfelnig cocked her head. She appeared to listen for a moment, then nodded slowly.

"Guess it's time for plan B there, huh?"

Θ

The _Kingdakka_ rocks from the force of another vicious las barrage. A squadron of tiny lumpen fightercraft speed by the viewscreen, releasing a volley of rockets almost as large as they are.

"Boss, shieldin iz holdin'. We kan keep dis up fer a while."

"Roight! Atinboro! Keep firin'!"

The gunner's piercing war-shriek is muffled by Shri's voice in my mind.

"Sebell."

_The next bit is Sebell thinking, not talking. Obviously. Because, I mean, if he was saying all this out loud, it would be really weird, even for Sebell. But I digress. Let's keep going._

" What's up?"

"I'm getting some signals from Irohov there, y'know? He's refusing to fight."

"So make him then."

"_Well, you probed his mind for a reason."_

"All right, Tzeentch's sakes. I got it. Technically I'm still your boss, y'know."

Θ

As the single word echoed through his mind, Irohov's vision suddenly blurred. The air was full of reddish-purple runes, little dancing motes of light... so... beautiful... NO! He screamed in agony, throwing his head forward and bruising his forehead on the rocky ground as a spike of psionic force drilled through his psyche.

"I'm trying to keep your mind stable. Stop resisting, or you'll make yourself go psychotic, and none of us want that."

There was a horrible _snap_, and Irohov went light-headed. It was as if he was watching someone else move for him. He rolled towards Nevski, unsheathing his hammer and landing a crashing blow across the surprised Triarch's face. He managed to regain control for long enough to scream two words.

"Kill me!"

Then he was forced away by an iron wall of thought. He spun away from the fire of the Energias with a speed that he wouldn't have thought possible. Extending a hand, his body surged with energy and a line of telekinetic forced crushed the skull of a trooper who was raising his flamer.

"See? Isn't that easier. Traitor."

Dashing past an Energia who was too slow to react, Irohov stuck a satchel charge in the exhaust port of one of his rocket launchers, shoving him towards his companions. With a roar, the rockets cooked off, killing several energies with a single blast. Ignoring the remaining Energias, he sprinted towards the _Shuvghovhod_. Then he felt the... thing controlling his mind _stretch_ outwards, enveloping the minds of all those in the war machine.

"No!"

"YES!"

The sparks of life were crushed in an instant, but slowly enough that Irohov heard every last desperate thought. Then the controlling influence left him with one final thought.

"You're here to do a job. Get it done."

He stumbled and collapsed, vomiting.

"So someone broke into your mind and forced you to watch as you killed about fifty people. At least you're still sane."

_Based on our knowledge of the internal systems of the Assault-variant_ Shuvghovhod_s, it was probably more like fifty-fiveish. But that's just quibbling._

"I-"

"Keep moving. Come on!"

Pulling him to his feet with one gore-soaked arm, Nnoitra forced Irohov into motion.

Θ

Multiple layers of shielding flickering under a near-constant las and missile assault, the _Kingdakka_ thrust forwards, huge fusion engines propelling a hull that was shaking from the force of the firepower it was creating and absorbing.

"Boss, we need more dakka!"

"Atinbork, activate da Reeflectaz! Fyewshin lances activate!"

Hull plates slid open across the ship, deploying a series of parabolic mirrors on the end of long monofilament cables. Huge electromagnetic baffles dropped into place over the _Kingdakka_'s engines, stopping its considerable thrust. Energy arcing across their corrugated surfaces, the lances recollected the waste plasma from the fusion engines, re-fusing it into a single pulse of radiation and light. The beam reflected off the network of parabolic dishes and spattered off the _Katyusha_'s shields in a vast, unwavering bloom of light.

"Recharge, 'an keep firin!"

Θ

"Captain, massive energy bloom on starboard shields!

The bridge display hololith flared heat and radiation warnings, before being suddenly drowned out by a huge bloom of light. The ship rocked, a plume of debris wafting out of multiple cracks in the hull.

"Report!"

"Sir, hull breaches in outer plating... internal plating reads moderate fracturing, nothing critical. Despatching repair teams now."

"What just hit us?"

"Collating data now, Sir. Looks like some sort of fusion laser. Not very tight-beam, but there's a lot of radiation damage."

"Gunnery control, set main cannons to ripple fire, aim starboard. Overcharge when ready. Engineering, run coolant systems to 150%. Navigator, prepare for a warp micro jump on my command."

"My lord, I do not think that wise... the ways of the warp do not-"

"Just do it. I want to phase out then phase back in directly next to them."

"Captain, is that wise? We have more long-range firepower than they do. They might attempt to board if we get too close."

"Lieuteneant Commander, that ship just turned its engines into a fusion laser the size of a cruiser. I don't want to know what other tricks they can pull out of their _apoli_ xenos hides. We end this _now_."

"Um... yessir."

"My lord, we are plotted for microjump. But I insist that-"

"Engage."

Θ

A huge rent in realspace emerged in front of the _Katyusha_, and, with a surge of energy, it disappeared, leaving its fighters and bombers stranded.

"Zoggit, did they'ze just run away?"

Then it reappeared at directly off the _Kingdakka_'s port, angled to allow thirteen of its huge lascannons, power cells crackling with force, to fire at point-blank range. They did so, with extreme prejudice. The Orkish ship was blown sideways as a small sun's worth of energy overloaded its shield generators, blasting thirteen neat holes in its hull. Hull beams straining against tremendous torsional forces, it snapped in half lengthwise, the upper section blown towards Pyros' atmosphere by the force of the detonation of the reactors in the lower half.

Θ

The air is filled with creaking and groaning. There is no power, no lights, only the dim glow of charred, smouldering electronics, and the brightening atmospheric glow in the rents of the hull. I sit strapped to my seat in the center of a bubble of energy, leaning comfortably against the broad metal back of the TAchimera which huddles close behind me.

"How're you doing, Unit 9?"

"Not bad, Mister Vivat! If you want to teleport us to the surface, now would be a really, really good time!"

"_Awww, suck it up you big wuss. We'll be fine."_

Squigwood is dead. Atinbork is dead. Mordakka, gasping for breath and turning a worrying shade of brown, staggers over to a panel and pulls a heavy lever. With a thump, the power comes back on, and we begin to decelerate. Viewscreens shimmer back online, and, looking through them ,I see the upper half of the ruined _Kingdakka_ falling away. Mordakka slumps into his command chair, inhaling the fresh air which gusts from vents, and seizing a pair of control sticks which rise from the armrests.

"So, Mordakka. I see you turned the bridge of your ship into an escape craft. Well done."

"Sod off."

Shri materializes behind me with a quiet pop, her veil of shadows melting away to reveal her pale, sickly frame.

"Whew. It's set."

"_Great! So... that's the first bit done. Now, I guess we just have to get where we're going."_

"Nicely done, Shri. C'mon. Make yourself comfortable. This ride is going to be... interesting. Also, good work with Irohov."

"It was a pleasure, y'know?"

Θ

_A few minutes earlier, aboard the _Katyusha_._

"Damn damn DAMN!"

Shri Pfelnig flowed through the hallways of the gunnery block, killing everyone she came across and searching for working computer terminal. She'd been a bit overzealous, strangling that guy with his own intestines. His juices had shorted out an exposed circuit panel, and now half the damned power was out! She lazily waved a hand, a streamer of black light neatly eviscerating a trooper who hadn't seen her coming. There were still some survivors, but she'd spot-welded the doors so no-one was getting in or out of this block.

Ahead of her, she spied a glowing greenish cogitator screen.

"'Bout damn time, eh!"

Bustling over to the cogitator bank, she pulled out a small data chip from a side pocket, inserted it into the correct port, and typed the series of coded commands that would activate it. A small red light on its casing pulsed once, and the cogitator screen suddenly switched to a pixelated image of an apple tree. Hitting a single key, Pfelnig disappeared into the aether. There was a few seconds wait as the cogitator bank processed the data on the card. Then, with a quiet whining noise, every single computer bank on the ship went dormant as a highly advanced fuzzy-logic-based virus overwrote the ship's cogitating operation system. Try as they might, the techs could only get the screens to show one thing: a cartoon image of an apple with a wickedly grinning smile.

Θ

Triarch Mikhail Koshkin surveyed the scene with pride, breathing the fresh (if rather too warm for his tastes) evening air. The Katyushan position was essentially solidified, the dropships burrowing deep into the soil, defensive pods deploying into heavy rocket turrets and fortifications. They were in an ideal position, backs against the wall that was the Mechanicus base. The cogboys were being remarkably cooperative. What with their leader dead and what remained of their armed forces scattered over half the settlement, they had to be.

"Sir?"

"Ah. Drebin. Do we have confirmation?"

His aide nodded.

"Yessir. Nevski is not responding, but the other three on the ground are in agreement."

Koshkin gave a satisfied grunt.

"Well all right then. One-two punch it is. _Tupolev_s and a _Muromets_, then finish the bastard off with the _Prypiat_."

Θ

Ivan Kozhedub felt his _Tupolev_ fighter-bomber shake as the pod carrying it began to decelerate. The needle-thing rocket fighter was held vertically in a gantry in the center of the pod, back-to-back with that of his wingman, Aleksa Pokryshkin. The vox unit on his console burbled, the sound distorted by the deep vibrations of the fighter drop pod's retrorockets.

"L-minus one minute. Systems reading green."

Kozhedub thumbed a switch, and felt an internal whirring as his augmetic cardiovascular system kicked in. All Katyushan pilots, especially those who flew _Tupolev_s, were highly augmented, as the g-forces from their powerful engines could literally mash an ordinary human. He booted the internal radar, which began to draw a feed from the pod's systems, giving him a clear picture of the outside airspace. The readout registered a clear sky, except for the distant radar contrails of several of the heavy lifters and command ships.

"Alpha 2, reading clear. Confirm?"

Pokryshkin's voice came back thinly, overlaid by the hissing of her augmetic lungs.

"Clear, Alpha 1. I'm checked out."

The flight controller's voice sounded once more.

"L-minus twenty... opening outer hatches. Charging catapults."

The outer hull of the bulbous pod slid away, leaving the two fighters buffeted by the roaring wind outside. With a low grinding buzz, their separate gantries swung outwards, until each ship was pointing at a steep angle relative to the pod. Clamps holding the rails of the magnetic launch catapults swung away, and two sets of heavily reinforced rail magnets extended outwards, streams of coolant creating two vertical contrails.

"L-minus ten, nine, fuel lines free, seven, six, main engines start, four, activating catapult, two, one... Launch!"

The catapults fired, accelerating the two fighters to several hundred kilometres per second and flinging them out of the frame of the pod, and into open air. Rear rockets flaring to fight the tremendous downwards momentum they'd accumulated, the fighters sped upwards, Alpha 2 swinging around to take formation on Kozhedub's right wingtip.

"We have cleared the pod. See you on the return flight, control."

"Roger that, Alpha 1. We'll have the landing pad laid out for you when you get back. Emperor-speed."

As the pod continued its descent to where it would deploy into a mobile airstrip, Kozhedub slowly gunned the throttle.

"Accelerate to cruise velocity, Alpha 2. Watch for the target."

"Confirmed, sir. Let's do this."

With a slight burst of power from its single engine the _Tupolev_s broke the sound barrier in unison, and continued to accelerate.

"Mach 1.5... 2... 2.5... 3... cruising at Mach 4."

"Sir, reading the _Muromets _coming in as expected."

The sun was blotted out as a huge shape pulled in overhead and matched speeds. The massive flattened triangle was a _Muromets_ bomber, its three rocket engines straining to keep it at mach- level cruising speeds. Eight twin-linked autocannon turrets scanned the skies, and, from where he sat, Kozhedub could see its two huge belly-mounted rocket pods, each carrying enough unguided ordinance to destroy a smallish Titan.

"Alpha wing, this is Beta Solo, signing in."

"Welcome to the party, Beta Solo. You know the plan?"

"Of course, Alpha 1."

"Good. We're not expecting any bogeys aside from the target, which probably isn't armed anyways, so-"

"Contact! I have radar ranging on the target. Locked!"

At the same moment, Kozhedub's radar pinged, showing him a distant blob. Within a few seconds the targeting computer had acquired a lock.

"Got it. Beta Solo?"

"Confirmed. Whenever you're ready."

"Accelerate to strike velocity. Prepare HKIs to fire."

"We will burn the land and boil the seas, because they can't take the skies from us!"

_That's the motto of the Katyushan Air Corps, by the way. It doesn't fare well in the translation, but you get the gist of it._

He pushed the throttle even farther forwards, and flicked a switch on the engine control panel. For a few seconds the rocket engine stuttered as fuel lines were diverted, but then he was pressed back into his seat as the four ramjets arranged around the base of the wings roared to life. His _Tupolev _shot forwards, riding a line of blue flame, and Alpha 2 followed shortly.

"Beta Solo accelerating to attack velocity now. We'll see you in a few minutes."

Behind him, the _Muromets_' ramjets activated. Though much larger than those of the fighters, they were still not enough to propel the massive bomber to a speed faster than Mach 5. The fighters were travelling at Mach 6.

"Visual contact on the target."

"Fire at will, Alpha 2."

Θ

Mordakka has the escape vehicle on a regular flight path, though we're still descending rapidly.

"So. Warboss. What's the plan?"

"We get down, we kill all da Humies, an' den we leave. Got dat?"

"_Your Waaagh! is dead, Mordakka. You know you can't win."_

He turns suddenly in his seat, and I see that he's foaming at the mouth, his eyes squinting redly.

"Dey killed me Waaagh. Dey killed me ship. Dey killed me WAAAGHBLASTA! DEY'ZE! ALL! DED! WAAAAGH!"

Θ

Heavy Kinetic Impactor weapons, or HKIs as they were more commonly known, were simple, effective, and deadly. Consisting of nothing but a compact ramjet with a wing attached, they would accelerate to tremendous speeds, moving at velocities similar to projectile of a Tau railgun, albeit with much, much more mass. Kozhedub thumbed the firing switch, and his fighter's four HKIs detached, their engines cycling on and sending them screaming away towards the distant flying blot on the horizon. By the time the projectiles arrived, their engines would have deteriorated literally to the point of melting, but they weren't designed to fly long distances. They were designed to travel fast and hit hard. Off to one side, he saw Alpha 2's HKIs tear away, and their powerful jet wash rocked his fighter for a moment.

"All ordinance away, Alpha 1."

"Roger. Beta Solo, you are cleared to commence bombing run."

"Moving to engage... Right. I've got a confirmed hit on two of the HKIs... target is still flying. Commence rocket saturation. Cruise missiles away."

The two rocket pods in the belly of the bomber let loose their ordinance, a volley of fifty unguided rockets with thermobaric warheads. They exploded around the distant blot, filling the air with a punishing cloud of acidic liquid explosive before detonating with a mighty rumble. Then the cruise missiles, launched from four tubes on the top of Beta Solos' hull hit, their high explosive payloads creating a burning secondary explosion.

"Target... _apoli_. Target is still flying."

Θ

"Good work on the shield charms, Root."

"_It was a pleasure. Let's all try to get out of this alive, okay?"_

Θ

"Attention all units. Clear the area. We have a _Prypiat_ missile on the way. Get out of there now."

"Roger that, control. Alpha wing bugging out."

"Beta Solo is away."

Θ

_A few minutes earlier, in the Katyushan base._

Koshkin stared through the fire-slit of the bunker as the large, remote-controlled launch vehicle rolled slowly into place, its huge treads grinding the rocky soil into dust. The missile that squatted on top of it like some sort of technological gargoyle was lumpy and irregular. The _Prypiat_ was a weapon designed to take out high-value targets whatever the cost. Three highly unstable fission reactors, mounted around an overcharged fusion reactor in the missile's warhead would generate enough heat to melt through a target, then incinerate everything inside and heavily irradiate the area. They weren't commonly used weapons, given their tendency to permanently make an area inhospitable to all life.

The weapons tech next to him checked a few readouts, and then turned his vox relay to general broadcast.

"We're charging the reactors now. Everyone clear the area. Radiation shielding emplaced, commencing fuel injection."

No one ever worried about a _Prypiat_ exploding. The could not, in fact, explode. What they could do extremely well was get hot. The place where the first test protoype had failed was now entombed under a cubic kilometre of lead-lined ferrocrete.

"Coolant check... Main turbines start."

The rocket began to judder on the launch pad, coolant puffing out of the vents around its massive engine.

"Calibrating ballistics..."

The rocket tilted slightly on its carrier, and the juddering grew more pronounced.

"Ballistics locked. Fire."

Without warning, the missile heaved into the air, and Koshkin was momentarily blinded by the billow of smoke, pressing his hands tightly over his ears, the roar of the liftoff loud even through the walls of the bunker.

"Missile away. All clear."

Θ

"Mister Vivat, I'm reading something big incoming!"

"Root, shields!"

"_I'm trying, dammit, but-"_

The missile hit the small ship at slightly under the speed of sound, knocking it out of the sky. A set of heavy grapnels deployed along its forward surfaces, permanently tying the two plummeting vehicles together. Then the reactors went to full power; the surface of the missile bubbled away, plumes of metal almost heated to gasification spewing away as a nuclear inferno, as hot as a sun, burned a hole through the ship's hull. Then the superheated ball of metallic death hit the ground, fusing the soil to glass and melting a massive pit. The last of the _Kingdakka_ was no more.

Θ

"Sir, target destroyed."

"Excellent. Prep my _Shuvghovhod_. We're going to collect the Edelweiss."


	8. Vivat Dies

The enemy base was close, towering walls blotting out the horizon. Irohov and Nnoitra had been fortunate, really. They'd manage to avoid the enemy, and, judging by the occasional explosions behind them, the Flamaz still had some fight left in them. They had entered a clear patch, free of any outbuildings; a sweeping tarmac surface scored with deep ruts and gouges, obviously some sort of testing ground or storage space. It was completely deserted, though when he checked his scope Irohov could see some movement in a guard tower on the far end.

"Nnoitra. The way looks clear. Should we move in?"

The huge daemon was hunched next to him. Its six arms recombined into one and it hunched forwards, blunt bloodstained muzzle held high, as if sniffing.

"I can detect no human presences other than our own and those in the guard tower. It is... peculiar."

"What, that there would be a hole this large in their defences?"

"Precisely. The enemy knows we are here, so why are they not mobilizing to intercept?"

"Lack of manpower?" As soon as he said it, Irohov knew he was wrong.

"Judging by the drop pods, I would say that reinforcements are not an issue."

Irohov shook his head firmly.

"We can't just charge in there! It's stupid, it's dangerous it's-"

"It's Khornate. Besides, I can only smell a platoon of guards. We can crush them with pathetic ease."

"I shouldn't be agreeing with you. I know that I shouldn't, but..."

"Oh, someone is pulling the strings. But not _my _strings. I'm just along for the ride."

And with that the daemon took off, arms re-separating and leaving long streaks of dried gore on the cracked tarmac.

"What-?"

Irohov hurried to his feet and followed, mystified and frightened.

"Not his strings? Along for the ride?"

Nnoitra reached the tower first, skidding to halt and preparing for the inevitable barrage of fire that would come. Better to let them shoot first. Make them think it would be a fair fight. But no shots came. In fact, there was no sign that the five Skitarii guards currently posted were even aware he was there. Irohov stumbled to a halt scant seconds later, the turbine exhausts on his rocket boots glowing cherry-red. Panting heavily, he had to struggle to remain upright.

"You... just covered... a kilometer... in about thirty seconds. H-how?"

"Something is very wrong here. Their minds. They're wrong. Broken."

"What do you mean... broken?"

"Just broken. We must investigate further."

"I'll... check it out. Keep me covered. This isn't right."

Taking a few deep breaths and trying to calm the raging cramps in his belly, Irohov unsheathed his flamer pistols, the soft whooshing of the pilot lights giving him scant comfort. The door to the tower was built into a sunken trench to protect it from incoming fire. He descended the stairs slowly, tried the handle, and, to his not inconsiderable surprise, the door opened smoothly and quietly. The thing standing behind it took a stiff juddering step forwards, and Irohov gave a startled yelp as the Skitarius tottered unsteadily to a halt, arms hanging limply by its sides. He raised his pistols, fingers tightening on the triggers, but something compelled him to stop.

"DI-"

"Wait."

The words came from the red-coated infantryman, but there was no way that they could have. It was the same voice that Irohov had heard in his mind; soft, childish, playful, but with a horrible grating _edge_ to it.

The trooper's head twitched, neck cracking unpleasantly, and the voice continued.

"If you're hearing this message, it means that you've successfully made it to the outer walls of your destination, and that both of you are alive and functioning. Well done. Please don't attempt to ask questions; all will become clear. You will find that the way ahead of you has been cleared. At this time, I would request that Nnoitra relinquish control back to Corporal Osavin."

"Never!"

"Fortunately, I had anticipated a negative reaction. Psionic lock activates... now."

Irohov's vision flared purple as Nnoitra collapsed to its knees, screaming in agony.

"We had an arrangement!"

The stone crumbled away, leaving Azul collapsed on a mound of bloodstained rubble. Shaking her head, she staggered to her feet. When she spoke, it was in a dull monotone, devoid of any of her usual fervor. Irohov knew that voice. He associated it with a thousand-klom stare. Battle shock.

"I died, didn't I? And he rebuilt me?"

Irohov could only nod.

"When we first left the _Ragtime_, we ended up on Katyush. Maybe Rojo wanted to return home more than I wanted to go out and destroy mankind's enemies. We tried to find our family. It ended badly."

She shuddered.

"She wants us to go inside. To find that... sphere. She won't stop talking, you know. She's very persuasive."

"She-?"

"The voice. It's all purple. Let's go."

Without another word, she began to walk towards the towering wall of the facility. Swaying, the brainwashed Skitarii followed, staggering jerkily along like a badly operated puppet. Which Irohov supposed it was. He followed, albeit hesitantly. It took some time for them to approach the wall, and, as they did, he was distracted from its looming bulk by what sounded like faint singing. Turning, he gazed off over the horizon, back towards where he knew the _Kingdakka_ to be, where a welter of clouds had gathered. As he watched, a single sunbeam pierced the cloud, and he could have sworn that the singing grew in intensity. Whatever was happening there, he didn't want to know.

Ahead of them was a small postern door, heavily protected by several layers of interlocking sandbag barriers, currently deserted. The Skitarius, swaying on his feet, punched in a code on a thick lock mechanism, and the door slid open with a hiss. Azul and Irohov ducked inside, treading carefully along a short, dimly-lit corridor that opened on to some sort of maintenance hub. Three minor enginseers were busily occupied with the machines but, upon hearing Irohov and Azul's footsteps, they looked up, surprised. Then they died, their legs giving out from underneath them, metal implants clanging as they hit the floor.

"What the hell just happened?"

"She can be very, very persuasive. Like persuading your heart to stop beating. Or your muscles to break your bones."

Before they could move further, the air began to shimmer, thin iridescent traceries of green-white light dancing among the motes of dust. Then reality flickered, and they stood in a massive rocky groto, its ceiling held up by a series of huge metallic support pylons. Behind them and to the sides the cavern stretched away into the blackness, but ahead of them was... something else.

The Sphere. A circle stretching away into infinity. Three dimensional, but without definition. It drew the eye like a candle in the darkness. And it was _changing_. Three rings of opalescent light pulled away from the surface, descending around Irohov and Azul. They were completely immobilized by the soft light, unable to move even the slightest. And then came a voice. Soft, sweet, tired, and completely androgynous.

"Welcome, Agent of the Commonwealth. I am starting decontamination procedures now. Please wait."

Θ

"Root, what smells like grox burgers?"

"_Um. Your skin, Sebell. Shit, the Proteus readouts are telling me most of your dermal layers are either burned away or... whatever critically compromised means. I've reconstructed your clothing, halted the radiation damage and killed all your pain sensation, but..."_

"Shri, how do I look."

"Um, y'know how a steak looks like after three hours on a grill?"

"Oh, _Tzeentch_. What about Mordakka?"

"Raditation took him, Mister Vivat!"

"All right. Take the brain, then send word to Control that we're ready for the next phase."

"And what about that there army, eh?"

"_Oh, Warp take them all."_

As the TAchimera's saw whirrs, I flex my left arm, feeling the brittle, burned skin pop and flake. In a cloud of nanomachines, a large clockwork assembly of lenses and gearing assembles itself over my shoulder, arm and hand. In my right hand, the Gauntlet flares with unlight.

"Waaagh's over. Let the games begin."

Θ

It was rather like standing inside a prism. Irohov was suspended in the middle of an intricate grid of white light and small coherent clouds of sparkling crystal, lines of radiance playing over his body. The holsters to his flamer pistols quivered, and then vanished in a brief greyish haze. His hammer and rifle disappeared as well, and the same quiet voice rang in his ear.

"Your weapons will be returned to you once your identity has been properly determined."

"Wh-who are you?"

A second cage of interlocking crystal bars formed within the first, coming dangerously close to clipping the end of Irohov's nose.

"Please open your eyes and mouth. Commencing parasite removal."

Irohov did so reluctantly, and there was a blinding flash of blue light. He blinked painfully, his nose filled with a faint smell of ozone.

"Parasite removal complete. At this time, we would ask you to please remove any objects of religious or susperstitious faith from your person. Failure to do so will result in severe psychological damage."

Irohov fumbled in a pocket, digging out his Aquila. It wasn't that Katyushans were particularly devout, but it couldn't hurt to have one on one's person. The small pendant was enveloped in a bubble of pale grey dust, which slowly began to darken and compact before disappearing entirely.

"Commencing aetheric isolation. You will experience a momentary sense of soul-crushing nihilistic despair. It will pass in time."

"Wh-aaakkk."

He doubled over, clutching his skull as the psychic equivalent of a dull metal blade tore through his mind.

"E-emperor... help... me..."

The pain grew worse and worse, and he felt his vision begin to fade. Then there was a sudden dull _snap_, rather like the sound of a dislocated joint being forced back into its socket, and Irohov felt himself return to normal. There was a certain... brightness in the air, as if a shadow had been lifted from his mind.

"Aetheric isolation completed."

Θ

With a quiet snapping noise the TAchimera separates Mordakka's brain stem from his spine, spraying it with chemicals to clear off the ichor. Then, in one easy movement, he opens a small warp portal and passes the disembodied head through.

"All set Mister Vivat. Also, Control wanted me to tell you to collect and test a sample of his railgun weaponry. Once that's done, we're free to engage."

"All right. Root, stop it, please?"

There's a click from the clocklike device on my left arm, and the world grinds to a halt. I turn to Mordakka's headless corpse, hefting one Raildakka in my left arm as the Gauntlet on my right collapses into a fluid mass of grey-blue nanomachines, which swarm over the crude railgun.

"Let's get disassembling, Root."

"_I'll see if I can't cobble something together."_

Θ

_Around five minutes earlier, some ways away._

Commissar Emil Leman strode slowly along, eyes inscrutable behind her sunglasses as she scanned the abandoned buildings. Behind her marched several hundred bedraggled troopers, many of them wounded by infernal flame weapons of the savage Orks. They marched steadily, ignoring their wounds, all bearing a strange look of inspired hope. As they neared a makeshift Edelweiss encampment, Leman waved her hand lazily and closed it around the haft of a standard that anyone watching would have sworn was not there a few seconds earlier. It was a simple banner; topped with an Aquila, its flag pure white. The few troopers looked up, surprised, at the considerable force that stood before them.

"Comissar? Mais vous étes vivant? Qu`est-ce qui c`-"

"Suivez-moi."

Instantly they dropped into rank behind her, their faces settling into the same identical expression of pious strength. Noticing that one of them was a vox operator, Leman gave another lazy wave, the standard disappearing just as quickly as it had appeared. The column ground to a halt, and she unhooked the handset from the man's backpack. Dialing the general frequency, she spoke two words into the machine.

"Suivez-moi."

All across the town, Edelweiss and Katyushans heard her broadcast. As one, they began to move towards where the Commissar had begun to amass her crusade. Those Katyushans operating rocket artillery vehicles remained in their war machines, sitting catatonically in their seats, awaiting orders.

Anyone who had spent much time with the 215th Edelweiss would probably have remarked that one only ever saw one Commissar around, when the regiment should really have had many, given its size. To be sure, if one had checked the records, they would have found that there were 5 commissars assigned to the 215th, but no one had ever seen them, talked to them, or even remarked on their absence. The 215th had five commissars. It had always had five commissars. It would always have five commissars. Four of them just did not exist. There was only Leman.

The troops began to appear within seconds. Anyone watching would have noted that they shouldn't have begun to get to Leman's position so quickly. Within seconds she had a force of well over 5000 standing around her.

"Suivez-moi."

Θ

"You know, the sensible part of me is saying that this is a pointless waste of time, and that I have an army to fight. The rest of me is telling that part of me to shut up. Those are nice guns, Root."

"_They're pretty cobbled together, but the design is simple enough that they should survive just about anything. The ammo is small enough that you won't need to ever reload, and they'll draw power from the Armour."_

"Okay, we'll have time to test them later."

I pick up the two lumpy, heavy pistols, slipping their drum magazines around the loops the Armour has assembled on the outside of my armour.

"Now, let's get fighting, shall we. Restart."

My left arm lets out another click, and time reasserts itself. Then there's a pop, and a second copy of me appears next to me.

"Um, hello. Are you me?"

"Yeah, from a few seconds in the future. To set the Stopwatch to temporal reversal teleportation, you turn the minute hand to 12 and the hour hand to 3. In a few minutes, you'll be me and you'll go back to tell myself this. Anyways, toodles."

With another pop, he disappears.

"Well, you heard the man, Root. Let's set 'er up, and tell myself."

I rotate the hands of the Stopwatch, and time blurs.

_Okay, I'll cut out the bit about Sebell telling himself how to set the Stopwatch, and tell you about the Stopwatch. Its full name is Exelor's Stopwatch. Maximilien Exelor is the first and only head of the Bureau of Time, and quite possibly the most powerful Chaotic time mage in existence. He founded the Bureau about ten thousand years ago, right around the time of the Age of Strife, and he's been leading it ever since. The Stopwatch is his most famous creation; it combines the effects of every known temporal control spell into one relatively easy to use device. The problem is that the Stopwatch is incredibly difficult to control, given that the only controls are two rotating clock hands, and Exelor refuses to tell anyone what all the configurations are. It's vitally important to know what exactly you're setting it to do, lest you erase yourself from the fabric of time or de-age yourself or something. Oh, and interesting fact? There has only ever been one Stopwatch. It is so disconnected from the flow of real time that any attempt to copy it simply results in the copy becoming the real one. Thus, it's possible to wield two Stopwatches at the same time, with one being the Stopwatch from _now_ and one being the Stopwatch from _then_. Trust me, don't try to understand. It's... well, let's just say it's extraordinarily complicated. Anyways. That fulfills my interesting but unimportant interlude quota. Let's continue._

I scratch my face, feeling the skin flake off. I wipe my hands against my coat, leaving a reddish-brown stain.

"Wow, Shri, you weren't kidding when you said I looked like a badly burned steak. Oh."

She's already left, disappearing into the crowd of immobile Imperials.

"TAchimera, let's begin."

I begin to run, hearing the Stopwatch tick faster and faster. A distant figure standing on the burnt-out ruins of the _Aevangelus_ raises a standard, screaming a war cry I cannot hear. The enemy rushes forwards in silence, weapons raised. Suddenly, the mass of warriors is lit up by a series of blue energy discharges. The air is filled with a quiet ringing noise, and I see myself kill dozens with well-placed bursts from the Gauntlet. Then the Stopwatch begins to ring, and I'm teleported forwards in a flicker of blue light, dropping straight into the crowd. Letting off a wide, sweeping spread of destructive energy, I disappear once more, the teleportation sending me back in time to the point at which I originally teleported. It has the effect of creating dozens of me, all fighting at the same time and constantly shifting through the army, which is too slow to keep up. I can dimly see the TAchimera making its own gouge, letting off streamers of glowing orange projectiles from its claws, assault cannon tearing away at the crowd. I stop my wild teleporting for a few moments as the Stopwatch needs to recharge briefly, and feel a gust of freezing air over my back. I turn, seeing a shadowy figure standing astride a mound of mutilated human organs.

"Please. Don't let me interrupt you."

Shri melts away, leaving a trail of ichor in her wake. I disappear into time once more, but as I reappear I notice that something has changed. Previously the Edelweiss were charging with pikes and daggers, and the Katyushans with trench knives, but now they all hold Aquilas.

"Faith won't save you now!"

I draw back my hand, Gauntlet crackling with unspeakable power, when suddenly I'm driven back by a wave of light that hits me with the force of a physical blow. The air is filled with the susurration of many, many lips mumbling prayers.

"What the hell? This shouldn't be working!"

I've been driven to my knees by the force of the pure, holy light emanating from the Aquilas.

"_It's like something else is amplifying the force of their faith!"_

"Tzeentch dammit! Do something!"

"_I can't! It's too strong!"_

"Now bear witness to the light of the Emperor."

Suddenly I'm on top of the wreck of the Titan, a cold wind blowing about me. Before me stands a tall figure in a greatcoat, her long blond hair whipping in the gale.

"I will cleanse this world of sin, Heretic. Starting with you."

Before I can move, her Eviscerator is heading for my throat.

The air shimmered again, leaving Irohov standing in a cozy, white-walled room. The furniture was simple and low, calling to mind the home of some mid-level official. There were no windows, only thin lines of what appeared to be crystal imbedded in the walls.

"Azul, what just happened?"

There was no response from the woman, only a muffled chuckling. Irohov glanced over, seeing to his shock that her head was encased in what appeared to be a matrix of thin metal bars.

"He... he's gone! Nnoitra's gone! Thank the Emperor!"

"What? How? What in the Warp is going on!"

"There was a mistake."

It was the same androgynous voice from before, only instead of ringing from the very air, it now came from the human figure standing in the corner of the room. Its face was neither male nor female, pale whitish hair falling onto its slim shoulders.

"A very unfortunate mistake. However, since you are here, there are certain procedures which I must undertake."

"Who are you?"

It gave a slight nod, an expression of blissful serenity on its alabaster face.

"I am Gospel Secundus, primary Intelligence support unit for the General Commonwealth translink station Gospel. You may call me Gospel."

"What."

Gospel indicated that the two Katyushans should sit, and took a seat itself, relaxing comfortably into the yielding white cushions.

"What if I told you, ex-Triarch Ivan Zulonovich Irohov and ex-Corporal Azul Osavin, that this universe was but one of many? And that you are not the only Irohovs and Osavins in the multiverse?"

Θ

I throw myself backwards, calling up runes of shielding only to find that nothing happens. The Eviscerator narrowly misses the bridge of my nose, and I can feel the terrible heat of its flaming blades even through the thick haze of the pain-suppression drugs.

"Root!"

The Commissar deftly flicks the sword back towards me, forcing me to scramble closer to the edge of the Titan's melted body.

"I am Emil Leman, Heretic, and no foul abomination of the Immaterium can stop me."

I struggle to my feet, holding my fists in a classic blocking position. Neither the Gauntlet nor the Stopwatch nor the Armour is functioning, and I am pathetically unable to fight a swordsman.

"So you're the Blank in the commissariat. That can't save you, you know. This world is ours."

She lunges forwards, and I barely manage to block the blade with my left arm. The lenses shatter and warp under the force of her flaming sword, and I feel a terrible juddering run through my arm as the whirring teeth begin to chew through the casing of the Stopwatch. I manage to pull back, delivering a frantic hooking kick to the back of Leman's knee that sends her staggering back. I feel wetness on my cheek, and notice that my left wrist is bleeding badly.

"A Blank? An untouchable? No, foolish heretic. I am far more than one of those soulless monstrosities."

Then she begins to attack in earnest, her massive chainsword whirring through the air at impossible speeds. I can tell she is toying with me as I doggedly block, absorbing the blows and thanking Tzeentch for my drug-induced inability to feel pain. I'm bleeding badly from several places on my forearms and shoulders, where the sword has cut through not just the Gauntlet and the Stopwatch, but the underlying flak plating as well. The runic wards are useless now, denied their source of power.

"You're going to have to try a lot harder than that to kill me! I have the True Powers on my side!"

I'm desperately stalling now. Think, think, think! I wearily bring both arms up, forearms crossed, to deflect a blow that would have cut me in half, and I'm dimly aware of the chainsword chewing into me.

"Your gods have abandoned you! There is only one true god here; the Emperor of Mankind! AND IN HIS NAME, I CAST YOU DOWN, FOUL HERETIC! RETURN TO THE OBLIVION FROM WHENCE YOU CAME!"

She forces the sword down, and there's a terrible brunching noise and I can't see and-

Θ

The mangled, headless corpse, still standing upright through some spasm of the muscles, teetered over the edge. With a contemptuous one-handed backswing of her blade, Leman cut it in half, the flames from her sword igniting the already horribly burned body. It tumbled away, the two halves hitting the ground far below with a wet thud.

She looked out over her sea of crusaders, marvelling that the two remaining minions of the Dark Gods were still fighting. The daemonic machine, still whooping insane, childish shouts of bloody joy, stood atop a growing mountain of corpses, blasting away all who came near with an ever-changing array of firepower. The second figure, far less visible in the fray, moved deftly to and fro, leaving a trail of destruction in its shadowy wake. It was time to end this, and move on. She could feel the slow stirrings inside her mind. She smiled grimly. This was only the first chapter in the story of His second coming.

Θ

"Long before the Heresy, before even the Age of Strife, a small group of human scientists made a discovery that would alter the course of human history forever. They discovered that theirs was only one in a multitude of universes. The idea had existed for millennia as a theory, and had gained prominence with the discovery of the Warp, but it had never truly been proven. These scientists found that, by examining the way that certain fundamental components of matter and energy acted, they could be used to detect the actions of some other fundamental components of reality, existing in entirely different universes.

Based on this, they found the true nature of all reality; the multiverse is like an endless sea of foam. Individual universes, sharing similar traits, are bubbles within this foam, while the 'walls' of the bubbles are the subdimensions like the Warp. This is, of course, a completely inaccurate description of the nature of the universe. Its true nature cannot be comprehended by a human mind. Think of it, rather, as a lie to help you understand better.

Now, these scientists found that about a dozen of these bubbles were extremely similar. Namely, they all connected in some way to one particularly large subdimension, being the Warp. In all of these universes, history had followed a roughly similar course in a particular galaxy, the one which we call our own. A race known as the Old Ones had seeded life and fought with a race known as the Necrontyr. The Old Ones had been killed off, and the Necrontyr were forced into hibernation by an extremely violent extragalactic group known as the Enslavers. The life seeded by the Old Ones became the Slann, the Orks and the Eldar, who later would compete with a younger race known as Humanity. The Slann would fall into obscurity, but Human, Ork and Eldar history would continue as you know it. All the universes had an Emperor, and a Heresy, although it was not always Horus who led it. I could speak to you of the Dornian Heresy, or the Great Horde of the Khan, but those are other histories for another time. Another factor that varied was time; while the scientists lived in a universe that was in the tenth millennia by your reckoning, other universes were far ahead or far behind.

To make a long story short, the scientists saw a rough approximation of what would happen to their universe in the future, and were determined to stop it. They approached the Eldar Empire, still withdrawn and in its stage of hedonism, and convinced them, with their great psychic powers, to peer far, far into the future, where they saw what would happen. Horrified, the Eldar joined with Humanity, swearing to change their future. To make a long story short, they did. Humanity expanded into the galaxy, aided by the Eldar, and found alien life. Where they could not make peace, they subdued without destroying. The Orks, informed by Eldar seers of the slowly approaching Tyranid menace, left the galaxy en masse, determined to find and destroy an enemy that could actually put up a fight.

And so humanity grew into an age of incredible technological prosperity. The Iron Men, mechanical servants of mankind, saw the destruction their ways would cause and joined this great Galactic Commonwealth, further increasing the truly incredible power of the unified alien races. The ancient Necrontyr tomb worlds were located and destroyed, and those which could not be destroyed were blockaded by immense defensive systems ready for their awakening. Slaneesh never grew into existence, and the prevalence of simple, psionic-blocking technology stopped Chaos in its tracks. After aeons, the Tau rose, a new race which, Human scientists believed, had been sowed by the Necrontyr as part of some grand scheme of galactic dominance. The short-lived, warp-blank race was quickly brought into the fold, carefully monitored to ensure that it would not develop to dangerous levels.

And while all this happened, the Commonwealth was moving out of the universe. They had begun to expand into the subdimensions, establishing forwards pioneering bases on the very frontiers of reality itself. Their own universe stable, they broke through into others, and began the Great Unification. Three other galaxies were brought into the Commonwealth, Chaos was destroyed three more times, and the General Commonwealth was born. It stretches across four universes and dozens of smaller sub-dimensions, a conglomerate of nearly twenty quintillion sentient beings, organic and otherwise. It is ruled by a democratic assembly, composed of members from all four galaxies, from every race that we have discovered. In each of the four universes, the Orks have been sent out to combat the tyranids, while in three of the universes the Necrontyr are completely subdued. The fourth was brought in to the Commonwealth before the Necrons could develop, and the Necrontyr are currently a valuable part of our society. Your universe is the fifth the Commonwealth is expanding into, though it is at the very beginning of this expansion. We seeded it with translink stations like this long, long ago, monitoring the galaxy for any dangerous and unexpected changes. We are at the cusp of entering this universe, and making it part of us."

There was a long silence. Irohov sat in his chair, stunned. He didn't know what to think.

"You may be wondering where you come into this. As I'd said earlier, you two were accidents. It so happens that, at this time in U-0, being the 'central' universe of the Commonwealth, Professors Ivan Zulonovich Irohov and Azul Osavin are two of the foremost quantum historiographical experts known to man. Much of our equipment is based on genetic identification, and through pure coincidence you triggered my automatic recovery subroutines. Since you are here, I have no choice but to offer you induction into the Commonwealth, where you can do as you see fit. Should you refuse my offer, your memories will be wiped and you will be returned to the planet above. I would recommend the former. Your allies are not doing particularly well, and, frankly, I'm amazed that you didn't notice the orbital bombardment."

"What."

* * *

Sorry for the long delay, folks. It wasn't that I wasn't writing; I just forgot to post anything to FF. Again, sorry. I hope the three-chapter update makes up for it. I should have another chapter done in two weeks or so, barring unforseen interruptions.

Now, I'd like to take this time to ask you something, and encourage you to do something.

_Ask:_ Do you find my characters at all Mary-Sueish? I'm dreadfully worried that I'm straying into Suefic territory.

_Encourage:_ DO you have questions about the fluff I've mentioned in these stories? Do you want to know about my interpretation of the 40k universe? Ask! I'll answer!

As always, comments and criticism are heartily encouraged!


	9. Just as Planned

The burnt chunks of what had been Sebell Vivat twitched slightly, the heat and force of their impact causing the muscles to contract spasmodically. I glanced up, feeling the Warp return.

"_Sebell...? Damn."_

There was a mocking shout from high above.

"Ahh, I see you've joined us, foul warpspawn! Come, embrace your coming oblivion."

I pulled the smouldering flesh upright, my incorporeal form streaming tendrils of blue light.

"_You. You're dead."_

With a flash, my true form manifested. The body was encased in a vaguely humaniform shroud of translucent mercurial metal, intricate patterns swirling on its iridescent surface. There was no neck; the head was a sphere of obsidian stone, a single pentacle of glowing orange energy carved into its front face. From behind it projected a long cape of dark blue feathers, rustling in a nonexistent breeze. Surmounting the sphere hung two intricately carved gold horns, inlaid with precious stones and metals.

_So, in case you couldn't tell, this is me talking. Sebell was... well, Sebell was dead, I s'pose. Yeah, you could call it that. Anyways; the avatar I took here is my habitual one; Lords of Change tend not to actually look like giant birds unless they're really, really unoriginal, or expending ridiculous amounts of energy. I, fortunately, was neither. The headpiece was something I picked up from Ahriman; nothing like a good, regal headpiece to instil the fear of Tzeentch in your enemies. But I digress..._

I stretched an amorphous hand, and an ungainly cleaver of a sword coalesced into my grasp. I raised its overlong handle into a double grip, and watched with satisfaction as patterns of frost began to form on the blade. It was burning, but the flames were of ice, not fire.

"_You're not even a Blank, are you? You're something else..."_

With a flicker, I stood in front of her, cleaver held in a low blocking stance.

"_If you were a Blank, you wouldn't have the ability to boost the psionic abilities of others, or inspire complete loyalty. And you _definitely_ wouldn't be able to smite Sebell with enough force to fracture his soul."_

She laughed a great booming laugh, and the golden flames enveloping her chainsword began to burn even brighter. In three seconds, she would begin to attack. She knew that I knew. I began to cast a time-slice.

_Fully manifested, I regain the powers of premonition common to all Lords of Change. My time sense becomes a little... disjointed in situations like these._

Correction. She would speak... now.

"I am far more than a pathetic Untouchable, Daemon. I am His will made flesh!"

With that her feet rose from the ground, and, with a soft sighing, it began to rain white rose petals. Thin traceries of golden light appeared around her, their elegant curlicues forming the outline of a suit of golden armour.

"BEHOLD THE EMPEROR'S GLORY!"

I moved, pushing my way through time itself. She followed. Though she could not alter the timestream, she could react fast enough to compensate. Our blades appeared to move sickeningly slowly, my not inconsiderable mental powers working at top speed.

Faster. I needed to go faster. And so I did. And so did she. Impact.

The two blades hit with tremendous force, the energies of the impact hanging like a bloom of light in midair, unaffected by the accelerated flow of time we were creating. We were both blown back by the hit, recovering in midair. I noticed with some concern that she had sprouted wings of fiery light, and her peaked cap appeared to have been replaced by an adamantine crown. When she spoke, it was not in words. They would not have carried through the time-slice. This went beyond words.

"You are strong, Daemon. You will fall all the harder."

"_Bring it on, bitch."_

I swung my entire upper body, delivering a crippling volley of warpfire along the surface of my blade. The energies bloomed out towards her, but she deflected them with her sword, the crackling warpfire consumed by the golden flame. I teleported behind her, launching another apocalyptic barrage, and she turned, deflecting them easily. Now my form was changing, thousands of tiny mouths opening up and screaming unholy charms. Each mouth spat a needle-thin beam of light, the energies curving inwards and impacting on Leman in a bloom of un-light that shook the frozen air. She burst through the light, chainsword whirring, and landed a blow that sent me plummeting downwards, cracking into the earth with enough force to leave a considerable crater.

"IS THIS WHAT PASSES FOR FURY AMONG YOUR MISBEGOTTEN KIND? PATHETIC!"

Buried completely, I extended my will into the earth, tearing the very fabric of the tectonic plates below me. Huge boulders ripped themselves free from the earth, encasing an unconcerned Leman in a tomb of bedrock. I rose through the rubble, a wailing miasma of death whirling mere millimetres from the front of my obsidian face, and, with a roar of daemonic fury, bathed the stony tomb in the light of my power.

"_I'm just getting started!"_

The rock dissolved into radioactive dust, leaving my opponent hunched over, all of her power forcing aside the ray of death that pierced towards her. With great effort she stood, and, with a scream of pious anger that matched my own, reflected my power back at me. I cancelled it at the last millisecond, but my own energy was enough to blow me away for a second time. I hurtled through the air, gripping my sword tightly, and muttering words in Enuncia that would have torn whole planets asunder had they been uttered by a mortal not skilled in their use. I flickered into the aether again, moving faster and faster. Ranged firepower would not work. Unless. When I reappeared it was a continent away, cloaking my presence with a miasmic fog that covered the entire planet. Then all my mouths began to speak; an ancient rune of incalculable power, one that would rip reality itself asunder.

"_For Chaos in this fateful hour,  
I call on Tzeentch's glorious power,  
And the sun with its brightness,  
And the snow with its whiteness,  
And the fire with all the strength it hath,  
And the lightning with its rapid wrath,  
And the winds with their swiftness along their path,  
And the sea with its deepness,  
And the rocks with their steepness,  
And the Warp in its madness_

_All these I take_

_For Tzeentch's plans to make_  
_AND CHANGE MY FOE FOREVERMORE."_

Time ground to a halt completely, an entire Galaxy's worth of temporal energy flowing into my body. My form mutated again, thousands of tiny tentacles burrowing into reality itself, tearing free a chunk of spacetime and compressing it into a spike so sharp it could cut holes in the fabric of the universe. With all my might, I flung it towards Leman, and teleported back to the field of battle. She stood frozen before me, unable to compensate for a complete stoppage of time. I released my hold on the universe, and she slowly began to move again, reacting instantly to my presence. I threw a line of golden light at her, paused for several billionths of a second as her sword arced towards me, then jumped away once more. Time resumed a more reasonable rate of speed. To her credit, Leman actually had time to react as she was hit with the force of a Big Bang. She brought her sword up in a futile gesture of defiance before the light enveloped her.

"_Become light. That's change I can believe in."_

{ENOUGH}

The word was a physical force, pushing away the tremendous energies that had smothered Leman. As they cleared, I saw that she had also changed; her golden armour was more substantial, but it was her face... it was familiar. A face I had seen untold numbers of time, spread all across the galaxy.

The God-Emperor of Mankind raised his sword, and I was torn asunder.

{BEGONE, WARPSPAWN}

Θ

Leman collapses to her knees, still basking in the glory of the coming of her Lord.

{CALM, MY CHILD. NOW IS NOT YOUR TIME}

"My Lord... I-"

{THE FUTURE IS CLOUDED. BE WARY}

His presence fades away, as it is wont to do, and she feels an... _otherness_.

"_Betcha weren't expecting that, bitch!"_

Her mind fills with darkness, then snippets of thought as the invading being ruffles through the depths of her soul. They are more than images, they are concepts; constructs of thought the _thing_ has left behind to taunt her. Pterrian Links. Belief Splicing. And three words;

"_Just as planned."_

She feels her mind begin to slip away, and feels fear for the first time.

Θ

The soulless husk of what had been Leman rises skywards, skeins of energy tearing at it. With a blinding flash, the flesh is torn from its bones, leaving a bare skeleton floating in the midst of a ring of incandescent light. The bones begin to stretch and twist, taking the shape of a form much larger than that of their original user. Now the dust collapses inwards, re-knitting the lost flesh. Nerves, muscles, tissues. The naked figure hovers for a moment as a cape of midnight blue coalesces around its dark-skinned shoulders. Its eyes open for the first time, two boiling pits of blue flame. The tattoos on its bald head begin to writhe in a horrible mockery of life, and, with a pleased grin, it gives its wicked little goatee a flick.

"̵̧͞"̷S̷h̷r͘͡i?̛̛ ̴́I͏̡͟t̶'̵s̀̀͠ ̴͢͠ų͜s.̢͞ ̴̢͜Ţ͟i̷҉͟m̡è͜ ͟҉̧t͡͡o͘ ͝m̛̕o̢ve̵̕͢ ón҉͠͠.̧͡"̡́"

Θ

To the considerable surprise of the crewmen trapped within its unpowered bulk, the _Katyusha_ sprang to life, its immense reactor funnelling power to a single one of its forward gun turrets. The gargantuan las cannon swung ponderously towards the planet below, hidden subroutines within its mammoth processors coming to life under the influence of the virus permeating the ship's computer systems. Huge focussing lenses swung into a pattern their designers had never intended them to form, and the gun's cooling system began to rapidly overload under the strain of enough electrical energy to power an entire planet for several years. Then the gun fired; a single, incredibly tight beam, lancing instantly towards the world below. It tore through the atmosphere and incinerated the Mechanicus base, drilling through layer after layer of soil below. Then it hit the smooth surface of an immense spherical object, made of materials beyond the ken of man. It broke through.

Θ

I stretch out my arms, examining my new body.

"̧O͠h̷̨, ̢ve͘͟r̴͘y ͟nic̸̵è̛.͠ Ve̷ŗ͞y,̷̀͠ ̨v̢er̷͞y ̀͜n҉i̶͠c͞e̛.͏..̷"͡

I snap my fingers, and a burst of golden flame springs to life in the center of my palm, flickering cheerfully. With a wave of my hand, it is extinguished. Shri's voice echoes through my head once again.

"Don't mean to trouble you there, but we're in a bit of a bind, y'know? Help?"

"̕R̷̵i̴̷̛g̷͘͟h̶t̵̀,̀ s̢͟oŕ́ŕ̴ý̕.̸"҉

"Oh, and you might want to change your voice, eh. What with all the horrific screaming that happens when you think out loud."

"̢͟I̡s ̛͘͏t̡͞h͜ęre̴̶̡?̴̨ ́̀͢O̵̡h̀.̧́͢ ́̕͠Ok̴̴ay̧̛. How about this?"

"Much better."

I dive into the warp, reappearing above the battlefield with incandescent spheres of destructive energy crackling about me. The soldiers below are taken by surprise, but they gamely keep attacking. Whatever force Leman instilled in them seems to have disappeared with her death. I raise my arms, letting loose a stinging curtain of electrical energy that is more stunning than damaging.

"Stop!"

My mind stretches outwards, acting instinctively, and calming the fighting below. I make a mental note; investigate whatever psychic powers I've stolen from Leman in further detail.

"Worshippers of the Corpse God, hear me! You have lost!"

They gaze up at me, some praying, some weeping, but most stolid and silent. They don't seem to know what has happened.

"Your Commissar Leman, your precious psyker, is dead! Your spacecraft is disabled! You cannot possibly win! I, in my infinite mercy, will allow you to live a while longer! Begone, and your deaths will be swift and painless when the Dark Gods claim this planet!"

"No."

"I- what?"

I can't tell where the voice comes from, and I turn desperately to and fro, seeking the guilty face in the mob. Shri and the Tachimera, each in their own clearing, surrounded by corpses, raise their weapons once more.

"How dare you oppose the will of Chaos! I will say this once more; leave now, and you will die with relative ease!"

"No. Never."

"Wh-?"

"You kill our friends, our brothers, our family. You deface a shrine to the Omnissiah. You aid foul xenos. You kill an avatar of Him on Earth, and you expect us to run? Never. NEVER."

The air is filled with cheering, and the mob rushes Shri and the TAchimera, drowning them under a sea of bodies. A bright light flashes in my eyes, and I look down to see a Guardsman in Katyushan uniform pointing a laser indicator at my forehead. Seeing me, he raises a hand-held vox.

"All units, fire on my position."

I obliterate him through sheer force of will, my mind striking out and reducing him to ash. But it's too late. I can feel the rockets taking off, my newly-expanded senses giving me a horrifyingly accurate assessment of just how much firepower is headed my way. In the distance, I see the first streamers of rocket exhaust. And the sky splits open. Everything goes quiet. The air turns red. A pillar of light, lancing down from above, strikes the distant looming hulk of the enemy fortress dead-on. There is an infinitesimal pause, and then a noise like a planet ripping in half. The fortress is extinguished in an immense blaze of red light, a cross of bloody light blooming from the earth like an infernal tree. The ground begins to vibrate as the sky is split by a wave of secondary explosions, accompanied by a huge whirling wall of red-brown earth. In a flash, I have landed, teleported Shri and the TAchimera to my position, and raised my hands.

"Hold on!"

The pressure wave strikes us with cataclysmic force, air heated to the point of fusion sweeping away all in its path. I scream a wordless challenge, and a titanic shield of energy springs into existence in front of my palms, cutting the wind like a knife. It deflects around us, annihlitaing everything not protected by my powers. The air grows bakingly hot, and it takes even more effort to prevent us all from being cooked. The three of us are deafened by the shriek of the wind, buffeted by the fist of an angry god. But the front has passed. We have made a wasteland, and it is peaceful. I lower my hand, my skin throbbing as magic pulses through my veins in place of blood.

"Whew. Quite some power you've got there. What did you do to her, anyways?"

"She beat me... Or rather, she defeated Root and Vivat. Root managed to break into her soul at the last minute, but it was pretty touch-and-go. He had to rebuild Vivat with chunks of his own essence as well as Leman's. All three of them were destroyed, but I was created. You can call me... well, Vivat, I suppose."

"Mister Vivat, I just thought I'd tell you that you're radiating enough energy to pop a human being's skull open!"

"Thanks for that, Unit 9."

"The barrier is open. We should get moving, y'know?"

We vanish in a flicker of light.

Θ

Gospel rested its elbows on its knees and gazed benevolently at Irohov through steepled fingers.

"What's your decision, Triarch?"

"I'm not entirely su-"

"DOWN!"

He and Azul dropped to the floor as Gospel Secundus sprang backwards, a curtain of static bisecting the room. Everything beyond the barrier was overwhelmed by a blinding red-orange glare. The whole room shook, tilting slightly to one side under the force of the orbital laser barrage. Dozens of chiming alarms rang out as the defensive field dropped, and automatic sprinklers, growing organically from the walls, began to spray the melted floor of the chamber with fire-retardant foam. Irohov stumbled to his feet, gasping in the burnt air.

"What in Terra's name just happened?"

"We're under attack!"

There was a flicker of light, and two barking gunshots. Irohov collapsed, a thin trickle of blood dripping from the gaping, cauterised hole in his forehead. Azul grunted, spun around by a slightly wide shot which punched through her left eye socket and tore out the back of her skull. The metal framework encasing her head fell away, and she staggered into a half-sitting position, her right eye glowing red.

"Took you long enough."

Gospel tripped backwards in shock as a curtain of blackness surrounded it, pinning it to the wall. The blocky spider tank that had appeared in the newly-blasted hole in the wall surged forwards, pressing the chunky barrel of a hull-mounted plasma gun to the center of the humanoid construct's forehead.

"Please! Go ahead and move! Try me!"

Azul stumbled to her feet, one hand pressed against her ruined face, desperately trying to staunch the flow of blood.

"Vivat? You-"

Θ

I step forwards, chuckling. Exactly as planned.

"Ah good. Azul, you're still alive. I need you for just a little bit longer, so enjoy the time you've got."

I sheathe the railpistol, sitting comfortably on one of the badly scorched chairs that dot the room. The gun performed well. Root had done a good job constructing it.

"You're Sebell Vivat! You're an agent of Chaos!"

I nod, smiling.

"That's right."

Gospel struggles against Shri's shadowy bonds.

"What have you done?"

"I followed the plan. The perfect plan. I've already won, so there's no reason not to tell you how exactly I engineered this moment. It began almost eight years ago, well before I set foot on a planet named Namaskar.

You see, we've been aware of your Commonwealth's plans for this universe for some time. We can't match you for technology, but when it comes to countersurveillance, you can't beat Tzeentch. We knew you were watching and waiting, preparing to break through at some time in the distant future. So we went on the offensive. Through not inconsiderable effort, we hijacked your own surveillance technology, and peered into your universe. It took us five thousand years, but we managed it. We found out how your observation stations worked, how your security was dependent on genetic keys, key which were all too easily broken. So we found two of those keys. Two Katyushans, Osavin and Irohov. We tracked them their entire lives, waiting for the perfect moment when we could gain control of them without you noticing. And then we discovered something else. An Ork, a mere Nob, possessed a device which could jam your scans entirely without arousing suspicion. Shazo Mordakka's Waaaghkannons were a fluke, but one which we could explot. The plan was coming together. But we still needed a way to break through your... not inconsiderable defences. We couldn't build the las weapons that were your weakness without arousing your suspicion. We knew you were watching us. We've been aware from day one. So we went back in time and fostered the development of an Imperial group, one which we knew you did not think of as a threat. The Katyushans. We had all the time in the universe.

We still needed a way to bring all of these elements together. The answer was Namaskar. The Orks were already there, and we merely needed to give the Katyushans a push in the right direction. The Assassin was the key. Nothing forges trust quite like the flames of battle. It was a chaotic construct, of course. We planted it in an asteroid halfway across the galaxy, and arranged for it to smash into the planet's surface. Compared to that, masking its psychic spectrum to fool the ELdar was child's play. You might have been monitoring us, but you couldn't watch over the course of ten thousand years. Space might be your bailiwick, but you cannot even begin to control time. You saw some of what happened on Namaskar, but you didn't fully understand. The construct my organization called the Assassin ensured our victory."

I turn to Azul.

"Didn't you find it odd, Azul? How you were willing to trust me? Didn't it seem unlikely? I have a very peculiar psychic ability. They call it a miasma. They normally find it in worshippers of Slaneesh. People near you tend to be... drawn to those who posess it. It was just what we needed. We'd gathered you together, but we still needed a way to keep you alive. Especially you, Azul. Mordakka could take care of himself, and we were protecting Irohov, but your latent psker powers would allow you to find our traces. We needed to keep you safe, without getting involved ourselves. So we purposefully antagonised a Khornate forge. In one stroke, we acquired some extremely potent weapons technology, and allowed you to become possessed. Nnoitra kept you alive, so we didn't have to.

Namaskar also allowed us to send the Tau down the long path to annihilation. Do you recall Root transmitting radio data to Tkhiss? No? He did. Included in that packet of information was a memetic virus, designed to drive the Nntock speices to collective violent insanity. Didn't you notice that Tkhiss seemed to get more and more aggressive? And he brought his madness back to his homeworld, thus denying the Tau a strategic resource which would have greatly aided you in the long run. Vivat converted Namaskar to a ball of coal to hide our traces. We've found that there is nothing less suspicious than a Chaotic sorcerer destroying whole worlds. You'd be amazed at what madness lets you get away with.

Almost seven years passed. We decided on our plan of attack. We schemed and plotted, drawing all the threads together. We'd arranged for the station on Sanguine Pyros to be damaged in an asteroid hit, reducing its defensive potential considerably."

Gospel gasped.

"Impossible."

"WRONG. We crippled your Titan, we destroyed your sensors, and we ensured your destruction. We subtly influenced Mordakka, pushing him to attack the Imperial base that had developed on the ruins of your domain. We altered the currents of the Warp, sending the Imperial's cries for aid towards the Katyushans. Now, admittedly, the plan wasn't perfect. We hadn't anticipated that the Mechanicus would have rebuilt the _Gospel Prime_. Nor did we anticipate that one of the Edelweiss commissars would turn out to be a Living Saint.

We recovered Mordakka's brain, containing the schematics for the Waaaghkannon, the aforementioned device capable of scrambling the not inconsiderable powers at your disposal. In a very short time, you will find the monitoring stations you have scattered all across this galaxy will be blinded, one by one. But I digress; in addition to the ability to jam you, we also needed to know if we could bring our powers to bear on your home turf. You see, we know how your territories are blanketed by psychic jamming fields. The only way to break through them is with a tremendous amount of psychic energy. Now, Shri and the rest of my team do not depend entirely on the Warp to be useful. Sebell Vivat did. He had planned on siphoning away Nnoitra's essence to fuel himself, but fortunately Leman intervened, and made a far superior substitute. Nnoitra, you may go. Goodbye, Azul."

She gasps and collapses, dying as a seething cloud of red mist boils from her pores and melts away.

"One problem yet remains. Namely, the shield you've just activated that prevents all long-range teleportation in a one-light-minute radius. That's easy to solve, thanks to the... valiant sacrifices of Osavin and Irohov. There are certain ways of summoning people at any distance, through any barrier. All you need is the proper... fuel."

I spread my hands, chanting Enuncia, and the bodies of Azul and Irohov are surrounded by intricate glowing pentacles, the traceries of light tearing at the corpses. As they dissolve, two shadowy figures begin to form in their place.

"We've just opened war against the General Commonwealth. We will strike the first blow, one that will cripple you forever. Tzeentch wills it."

The construct shakes its head, its face a stern mask.

"Impossible. That's the most contrived serious of meaningless coincidences I've ever heard!"

"I know. Exactly as planned."

The corpses are nearly gone now. They've taken the form of a large man... or, maybe man. Its armour is massively bulky, all angular lines and crude bolts. This would have to be Al, from the Machine Division. The other figure is slim and willowy, a youngish-looking woman with wild hair. Her features are still blurred by the forces pulling her through the Warp, but I assume that she would be Darwyn, the Corruptor.

_Root here. Or, to correct myself, Vivat here. I hope you understand my deception; the person narrating this story and I are one and the same, in a twisted sense. Nonetheless, there are some dramatic conventions that must be obeyed. Anyways. Corruptors .Technically they're Reclamation Division; the men and women who we use when we need plagues, wide-area corruption, and what have you. Normally we borrow them from any Nurgleite groups who are interested. Oh, and the Machine Division; they're our engineers, our designers. I'm technically affiliated with the Field Division, but Sebell Vivat was mostly a Machinist._

"Not too long now, Gospel."

The machine continues to struggle against its bonds. Shri isn't even trying. She sits comfortably in the burnt-out wreckage of one of the futons, a foul-smelling cheroot smouldering between her thin lips. One of her arms, or rather the shadowy blot that is one of her arms, is stretched like a blob of taffy, pinning Gospel Secundus to the wall.

"You really shouldn't try to struggle, there. It's not gonna work."

I feel a change in the currents of the warp and turn, taking in the two completely materialized figures.

"Ah, welcome to-"

"_._"

It's a blistering stream of letters and numbers, delivered in such a way that it seems like an insult. The young woman strides past me, elbowing me out of the way, and reaching for Gospel's face.

"Oh, I've wanted to crack one of these _6d6f7468657273_ for a loooong time."

She reaches out a hand. Her palm seems to stretch, the skin moving as if something is stretching it from within. She closes her hand over Gospel's face, and gives it a slight twist. There is a quiet snapping noise, and the construct goes limp.

"_486f6c79206675636b21! _It worked, man! Sweeet!"

"What the hell is going on?"

I can read neither of their minds. The girl's doesn't seem to be there, while the armoured man's is a whirling blaze of green light that doesn't match any specific human emotion. I turn to him, beseechingly.

"Lord Al... I can call you that, right? Do you have any idea what's going on."

The clunky metal helmet, engraved with the craved image of a snarling bestial face, shakes ever so slightly.

"Not my name. Mistake. Eye of Tzeentch Proteo Darwyn. Reclamation Division."

"So wait, then you're...?"

She turns to me, reddish hair contrasting with her tanned face. Her eyes are a peculiar greenish shade. There's something... wrong with her. I can't grasp exactly what it is. It's like she's a lifelike model of a person, not a living being.

"_5374757069642063756e742e. _Francoise Grasscutter, Accelerated Learning Cogitation Engine, here for ya, man. Call me Al."

She twists her deformed wrists, and the bandages that cover her arms, neck and stomach begin to bulge inwards and outwards. Tiny strands of fiber-optic cable sprout from the skin of her hand, burrowing into Gospel's skull. The construct twitches, and its eyes open with a nearly audible click.

"You honestly think you can break into my mind? Pathetic."

She grins, and the odd distortion of her skin stops.

". No, no I don't. You're just, like, our first test model. What I learn from your mind, I can do to any of your artificial intelligences."

The construct's eyes snap shut once more.

"Um... Lady Grasscutter-?"

"Al, man. Al."

"Al, then. What exactly are you doing?"

Her left arm stretches straight out, the motion seeming jerky and mechanical. Then, in an instant, it too is placed over Gospel's face, the hand stretching and growing its own set of fiber-optic probes. To my moderate surprise and disgust, her head rotates a full 180 degrees, her disturbing eyes staring me down, a calm smile spread across her petite features.

"Y'see sir, this is the first time Machine Division's actually got our hands on a Commonwealth AI. We'd had a few theories on how to crack their _63756e74696e67_ operating systems, but they're not perfect. Our hardware just isn't, like, compatible. We know some ways to cripple them, but we can't break 'em. It's like... like killing a Dreadnaught. _Living beings must not be harmed_. You can cripple the servos, but the sarcophagus itself is _6675636b696e67_ impossible to open."

"Oh. By all means, continue then. Darwyn, where are you going?"

The bulky figure halts his slow shuffle out of the room, armoured head turning to face in my general direction.

"Unnecessary conversation. Mission objectives must be achieved. Commencing reconnaissance."

Shri gets to her feet, releasing her shadowy hold on Gospel. She takes a deep draw on her cheroot, and leans backwards, cracking her spine.

"He's got a point, there. I might as well go with. We're in no rush. I just got a message from the surface team. They've broken through whatever warp jamming Leman had going there."

"Multiple reconnaissance units unnecessary. Deploying subunits."

There is a loud squelching noise, the smell of freshly cut grass, and several small blue creatures go scuttling through a crack in one of the walls, deeper into the structure. Darwyn stiffly wipes the ichor off of his faceplate.

"Subunits deployed."

"Did you just vomit up several small gremlin like creatures?"

"Correct."

"Oh."

Grasscutter gives a triumphant whoop, her head returned to its proper orientation relative to her shoulders.

"_417373636c6f776e73_! Got it! _486f6c792073686974_!"

"What did you find?"

She withdraws her hand, and then pushes one forearm against Gospel's throat. There is a complicated mechanical noise, a crunch, a flash of silver, and she holds the construct's severed head against her waist. Several thin cables burst through the flak plating of her kilt, firmly binding the head against the small of her back.

"I think I broke into the _77686f7265736f6e_ tertiary portal control systems. I'm trying to convert from a hexadecimal system based off of the movement of quarks to _626c6f6f6479_ trinary, so I'm not entirely sure if it, like, works, but let's see."

With a low hum, the walls of the room begin to flow like liquid. Darwyn lets out a low ululating hum, and the small blue gremlin creatures squeeze back through the cracks, clambering dextrously up the armour of their father on horny feet. They reach his helmet, whereupon they are promptly devoured by a six-jawed mouth, bristling with needle teeth. By this time the cracks in the wall are gone, replaced by a single human-sized ring, embedded in the pearlescent substance of the wall.

"Here we go, man! Tertiary through primary phase transducers, online! Chevrons rotating! Dimensional translocation beacons locked! Kleiner compensators, online! Calibrated with the Great Dimensional Wormhole! It's ready! _4675636b2079656168_!"

The ring does absolutely nothing.

"What, that's it?"

"Y'know, I was expecting something a lot more dramatic there, eh."

"Continuous verbal status updates. For what purpose?"

Her head spins around again.

"Tell me, you _617373706972617465_ bag of unstable tissue, do you have a piece of fundamental core programming that forces you to give automatic status updates when your brain is processing at over 50%? No? Didn't think so, man. I swear to Tzeentch, someday I'll- _Living beings must not be harmed_."

Shri nods once, and then drops the butt of her cheroot, stubbing out the still-glowing embers.

"We just got authorisation from Control. Let's move."

And so we go. Through the looking glass.

Θ

_What follows is an unabridged quantum waveform reading detected and translated by the Bureau of Time. Signal keys have been left in place in case anyone wants to access the original waveform._

*Tapping start. 74X 11.38.

*Signal shift to 07.13.93

*Lock

*Signal begins:

01 Joins: GC Compus Mentus Greatly Responsible (CentGov U-0)

02 Joins: GCS Compus Mentus Politics By Other Means (CentMil U-0)

01: I assume you've seen the despatches from CentSci?

02: Yes, yes I have. With great concern. I've got the defence unit for U-1.1 active, ready on the point of incursion.

Datafile: U-1.1 GCS Force Organization

01: We've managed to decode more of Gospel Secundus' transmission.

Datafile: Gospel Secundus Log version 1.12

02: Psychics? All right, I'll give orders for mobilisation of a containment unit. We're calling up some of the vets from the Ioan U-2 contingent.

01: This is within the purview of Peacebringer, correct?

02: Yes. I'm inviting him now.

03 Joins: GCS Compus Mentus Peacebringer (SubMil U-1)

03: Thank you. It's an honour.

02: You're going to have Ioans alongside your Persuaders, Peacebringer.

Datafile: Major Karson Fero, Service Record.

Datafile: Lieutenant, Necrontyr Designate [G Major], Service Record.

Datafile: Lieutenant Lofn Tijieth, Ulthwé Ranger Auxilia, Service Record.

03: Oh, now that is interesting.

01: I trust you understand the implications of this event.

02: Of course he does.

03: Your trust is not mis

Interject. 00 Joins. Monitoring GSC Compus Mentus Quantum Gravitas (CentCom U-0)

00: Signal interception detected. Intercepting and initiating memetic countermeasures. Duck and cover.

XXXXXX

XXXXXX

XXXXXX

*Tapping Ends.

*System Failure: Flagrant Error Unknown.

Θ

_A little less than an hour later:_

I nearly trip as another volley of particle beams ripples past me. The Gauntlet flares uselessly, trailing gobbets of energy like drunken fireflies. We swerve frantically, ducking around one of the massive pillars which reach into the impossible sky above us.

"Where in the hells did they come from?"

"_41772c2074697473_! No time, man! Run!"

Behind us, the buzzing roars of the enemy grow ever closer. We have made a grave mistake.

* * *

Wonky updating times, yay! I'm still trying to get back on an actual schedule. Next chapter should be out in around 3 weeks.

In the meantime, your comments, criticism and questions are welcome, as always.


	10. Insanity, Energy Weapons and Shock

Shri turns a wild somersault in mid-leap, a greenish particle beam cleaving the air where she had been. The veil of shadows that surrounded her is gone; now she's merely a frail figure wrapped in voluminous, tattered cloth.

"Vivat! We can't keep running forever!"

"Our weapons are useless! D'you have a better idea?"

"Why not-"

Everything goes quiet, and I realize, dimly, that I'm falling. Ever so slowly. Softly. It's all so soft. I look down. At the stump where my leg should be. My, but that's a lot of blood. Someone should do something... about... that.

I hit the ground, and the pain comes.

"SHIT! Tzeentch dammit, I've been hit!"

Shri throws herself into a skidding turn, flinging a thin spike of corroded metal as she does so. There's a distant shriek off in the distance. She's hit something. Everything's gone cold, except for my leg. The agony is like static in my mind.

"Give me cover, !"

Suddenly, Al and Darwyn are there.

"Lady Pfelnig. Request you move. Commencing life support."

Darwyn brusquely shoves her aside, ignoring the incoming fire completely. He leans over me, and the bolts that hold his armour together begin to unscrew. There is something seeping between the seams; pale, sea-green fluid, pulsating and flowing... The metal collapses as an amorphous green blob surrounds me, immersing me in organic fluid. It tastes like limes.

"Attempt normal breathing. Lung transpiration in place."

I breathe, dreamily. It's so soft... and the pain is gone again.

Everything fades.

Θ

Darwyn contracted, his amorphous form collapsing inwards as the fluid morphed into thick chitinous plates. Dozens of tiny legs sprouted through the armour plate, hefting his bulk upright. A mouth opened somewhere amongst the armour plates still imbedded in him.

"He is secure."

"Man, you get out of here. Shri, cover me. It's time I got to work."

She obeyed unquestioningly, two thin, flexible metal cables springing from the sleeves of her robe. With a flick of her wrists, two power fields snapped to life, their flickering light illuminating her face with hideous shadows.

"Got it."

With an audible 'pop' of inrushing air, she was gone, moving at impossible speeds. There was another distant screech, and the volume of hastily-aimed particle beams abated somewhat. Al flexed her shoulders, feeling them pop, and then reached for the thin clips that held her bandages in place. First the arms, _click click_, then the waist, _click click_, and the legs, _click click_. She flexed her shoulders again, noting with satisfaction as the loosened bandages retracted on their spring-loaded coils, drawing back beneath the skin of her shoulders. She stretched her bare arms forwards, hands held palms together, fingers pointing outwards. Inside her, she felt the stirrings of the massive forces that powered her. Processing power at... 48%... 50%. _417373636c6f776e73_. Time to start status updates.

"Atomechanical systems, charging! Preparing for multiple shift sequences! Configurations: High-Intensity Magnetic Rifle, Nanolathe. Begin!"

The skin on her arms cracked like dry clay, splitting into dozens of tiny plates, each balanced on the end of a fragile armature. They twisted and danced, the newly repurposed skin forming a boxy oblong in place of her forearms, connected by thin metallic joints to where her elbows should have been. Her fingers burst, exploding into thin bundles of wire, which rapidly twisted into a tube of cablework. Her thumbs slid downwards and locked in place, unfolding like rose petals, then twisting back inwards to form a thick-walled tube. What was left of her hands slid backwards, collapsing the wrist joint into the boxy hull created by her forearms. The interior framework of her arms split, forming a thick butt, braced by two hydraulic pistons, and a heavy-duty handgrip. With a crunch, her upper arms elongated, their metallic 'bones' sliding downwards to form new forearms, the joints on their ends blooming into skeletal hands. She grasped the newly formed rifle, levelling its thick barrels at where she knew Shri to be.

"HMR configuration complete! Lady Pfelnig, get down!"

Her voice was inhumanly loud, more of a mechanical shriek than anything else. Then, dropping to one knee in a perfect firing stance, she opened up. In the space of a millisecond, the HMR's internal systems scanned all nearby potential targets. They were non-living, so the safeties clicked off. The upper barrel of the HMR surged with electrical current, launching a pinpoint burst of electromagnetic energy, accompanied by a tiny capacitor. She tracked the projectile, the lens assembly that burst from her right eye allowing her to see it with perfect clarity as the EM wavefront hit one of the enemy soldiers, tremendous amounts of energy crackling across its camouflaged skin. It staggered, systems fighting against the surge of power overloading its systems, then fell as the capacitor hit it, breaching its outer layer of armour and discharging a burst even more powerful than the first.

There were six enemy units in the first squad that surrounded Pfelnig, all of them mechanical. Well, five now. Five shots, one second. Five perfect hits. Five elongated, eel-like figures collapsed to the ground, sparks dancing off their skins. And then she ran, feeling her skin begin to twist as she did. As she reached Shri and the six disabled enemy troopers, her chest cracked open, ribcage opening like the jaws of some horrible leech.

"Commencing nanolathing shift! Main atomechanical converters, online!"

She dropped the rifle, her arms sliding down her back and locking in place at her thighs, forming a stable quadruped base. Her ribcage was now fully extended, exposing the shimmering mechanical heart within. Her face collapsed into a sharp point, dividing into thousands of tiny spikes as her spine sectioned, whirling outwards into a hazy cloud composed of thousands of tiny needle-tipped wires. They extended outwards, digging into the body of the nearest enemy unit. As they pulled it in, she began to nanolathe, stripping away its component materials and regrafting them onto herself. It had begun.

Θ

_This is Al's field report on what we came to know as the General Commonwealth Persuader-model infantry shell. I've added extra text transcriptions to substitute for some of the machine code she used._

The persuader stands about seven feet tall, although its low stance means it normally appears to be only five. First impressions are of an eel with legs. Profile from the front is extremely slim and angular, minimizing target profile. Side profile is much wider and angular; all armour plating is angled forward-to-back, giving plating a 'wing like' appearance. Main body is composed of a thin tubular central core, covered with thickened armour plates at shoulders and hips. Upper body is roughly triangular, with a thickened section near the waist to allow for the third arm. Shoulders are narrow, with wide armour plates congaing power supply stretching backwards. Arms are thin, triple-jointed, and extendable. Hand has six fingers, some form of grip technology that gives it near-unlimited holding power. All joints have 360- degree rotation, near 360-degree flexing capacity. Third arm follows the same configuration as other two, but lacks shoulder joint. This joint is replaced with a flexible ring which allows the arm a full 360-degree range of motion about the body. Neck is thinned and elongated, also slightly extendable. Head is compact, bullet-shaped; main processor held in the groinal area. Five eyes, covering 360-degrees. Full sensor suite, covering most of the electromagnetic spectrum. Wide-band comms equipment covering similar range to sensor suite.

Thighs and groinal area are most heavily armoured, to protect A.I. transducer core within. Little internal processing power; unit would appear to run off external control and/or networked A.I. Hip armour contains grenades, close-combat weapons, general storage space. Exact hip armour configuration would appear to vary depending on combat role of unit. Buttocks replaced with tubular anti-gravity unit of highly efficient design. Capable of total weight nullification of unit, allowing near-infinite jumping and high stability in difficult or impassable terrain.

Legs are interesting; appear to possess seven different joints, capable of assuming a wide variety of locomotive formats. Legs can be split down the center, allowing for quadrupedal and even hexapodal locomotion. Feet are very small; reliance on continuous non-static balance could be a weakness. Feet have similar grip technology to hands.

_I'm cutting the next thirty-seven pages of detailed structural and materials analysis, but I will give you Al's summation;_

The Persuader is clearly a design that favours high mobility and flexibility over physical strength. Given the relative weakness of the armour compared to what we know of the Commonwealth's materials technology, we can surmise that it is not designed to absorb fire. Metamaterial camouflage ability, combined with highly variable limb configuration, antigravity abilities, and lack of any inbuilt weapons systems all indicate a combat system designed for tactical flexibility and versatility, not brute force.

Θ

He walked among the trees, nodding to the couple as they passed him. A middle-aged man in a faded peaked Commissar's cap, accompanied by an attractive older woman with long grey-black hair, a strict military bearing, and a massive scar bisecting her face. Two Imperial vets who'd insisted on maintaining their original appearances, in all probability. They weren't that common, but you tended to see more of them in U-2 than anywhere else. The Imperium hadn't really developed in the other universes, what with the peace with the Iron Men, the halting of the Heresy and the rise of the Necrontyr. U-2 was the only universe that still maintained the trappings of its subsumed Imperium of Man. He checked the Watch update reports. Nothing unusual. Cadia was a peaceful planet now, a favourite relaxation spot for ex-Imperials and military history buffs. The fact that at least a quarter of the planet's mean population at any one time was either armed or a former soldier kept crime down. Waaaay down. Everything was peaceful. Until the Vessel appeared. It was a Mobius strip of white metal, about three meters across, which suddenly appeared before him, hovering innocuously among the trees.

"Karson Fero?"

He nodded, removing his hat.

"Yessir. I thought this day might come. You are?"

"I am a Vessel avatar of the General Commonwealth Security Compus Mentus Say What Again, a representative of the Subdimensional Military forces of U-1.1"

"Pleasure to meet you, Say What Again. What do you need me for?"

The Mobius strip inclined slightly towards him.

"The Commonwealth needs you, Major Fero. The Multiverse needs you."

Θ

The enemy had pulled back after seeing what had happened to their point men. They were still a ways off, surveying Al and Pfelnig with drawn weapons. The serpentine constructs had set down some form of portable shield generators, taking cover behind coruscating panes of light. They'd stopped firing. For now. Shri was still watching them, toying with one of her throwing spikes and occasionally puffing deeply on a cigar.

"Al, I'd be the first to admit I'm not the best with machines, there, but what in the Warp are you doing?"

With a _crunch_, the corpse of the final enemy soldier was torn apart, its plating dragged into place across the thick conical lattice that was now Al's body. She had firmly connected herself to the ground, any semblance of a human form lost amidst the technology. A panel of the lattice pulled outwards, folding and pleating itself into the vague semblance of a human face.

"I'm building us cover, man."

"Cover?"

The outer layers of the latticework shivered, then began to move. Thin plates folded, drawing themselves away from the frame. Cables and wires pulled away, retracting into grooves in the plating. The whole flattened plate structure fell away from the latticework core, and then began to fold into itself, plates interlocking and twisting as they began to assume a humanoid form. It was rather like watching a deck of cards being shuffled, if the 'deck' were the size of a small person. Pinkish fluid flowed from ports in the plating, rippling across the surface of the structure and congealing into what appeared to be human skin. Fiber-optic cables sprouted from the skin, weaving themselves into clothing and hair. With a gasp, Al opened her eyes. The whole process had taken no more than ten seconds.

"Cover, man."

She pulled a chunk of unidentifiable technology from the lattice, and it folded itself into the HMR in her arms.

"This thing is a bomb. A very _6675636b696e67_ powerful bomb. It uses constructive EM interference and cancelling to halt thermodynamic activity in a wide area."

Shri gave an elaborate shrug.

"I don't know what that means, eh."

"It kills electronics and freezes things, ."

"So, what, we just set it, run away and assume they won't notice that we've planted a Tzeentch-damned bomb in front of them?"

"That's the plan, man. Oh, and we have fifteen seconds until it goes off. And the shockwave travels at the speed of light. Better start running."

The butt of Shri's cheroot dropped from her nerveless lips.

"Buh-"

The bomb exploded.

Θ

"Major, Fero, I'm sure you appreciate the gravity of the situation."

He would have nodded if he could. Unfortunately, he didn't have a head to nod. His brain floated in a dome-shaped tank filled with clear suspension gel. Deft mechanical hands removed it from the plug in his previous body, and his vision flickered to his backup internal systems.

"Of course, Say What Again. I'm not sure I'm the best man for the job. I mean I wasn't trained fro transdimensional incursions."

His voice, slightly modulated by the tiny speakers in his containment tank, rang through the high hall of the armaments bay. His tank snapped into the neck cuff of the Vanguard 7 tactical armour, and he experimentally flexed his new limbs.

"Major Fero, no one in the Commonwealth is trained for transdimensional incursions. We need you because you can deal with psykers. Your experience against the Grey Knights on Io in U-2 will be of great help."

Fero checked the Akai 4VII particle gun, sighting down its pinkish casing and briefly exposing the internal reactor to feel for instabilities. Satisfied, he locked the pink-plated gun against his hip plating.

"Say What Again, I'm still not sure why I'm willing to do this. Io was... not something I'd like to repeat. We lost too many good people, whatever their species. There was a reason I left General Commonwealth Security."

The Compus Mentus, still in its Vessel form, sighed.

"I can appreciate that, Major Fero. I've heard the stories, seen the footage. But we need you. What's happening in U-1.1 is a grave threat to all that we hold dear. Allowing Chaos to gain a foothold within our territories could lead to our destruction."

He swung his secondary arms forwards, and they floated in front of him. He exposed the gunpods, cycling rapidly between mass accelerators, antimatter pulse guns, and submersion beams.

"I suppose. I joined the Watch for a reason. To protect and serve. And that's what I'm doing now, isn't it?"

"That's right. Ah yes. That reminds me. We've cleared all this with the Watch on Cadia-2. You're on indefinite payed leave as of... two hours ago. You have no need to worry about your friends and colleagues."

He surveyed the chrome shell of the Vanguard. Everything checked out.

"Huh. You;ve thought of everything."

"Naturally."

"Well then, I'd like to meet my team."

As he turned to leave, the gantry holding his old body sunk slowly into the floor.

Θ

The explosion was rather like an apple. Half an apple. Half an apple made of _cold _and_ brightness _and _silence_. Shri dropped to her knees, feeling frost forming over her skin. Al stood before her, arms outstretched, silhouetted against the ferocious hemisphere of frosty light. Even through the heavy filtering in her mask, Shri was still blinded. Then the light faded, and she blinked painfully, the mechanisms in her mask rapidly repairing the damage to her eyes.

"What did you do? How did that not hit us?"

Where there had previously been a flat, mechanical plain dotted with pillars under an impossible sky, there was now a flat glacial plain dotted with huge spikes of ice under an impossible sky. She could see the twisted silhouettes of the General Commonwealth war machines, their smooth forms broken by blooms of ice. Al gazed down at her, and when she spoke, it was with great difficulty.

"_Living beings must not be harmed._"

Then her whole body was wracked by a fitful spasm, and some semblance of life returned to her eyes.

"The word bomb isn't totally true, man. It doesn't explode. The pulses it generates can be focussed. And besides, I wouldn't make an explosive device because _living beings must not be harmed._"

Shri staggered to her feet, still wincing at the brilliant afterimages that danced behind her eyelids.

"Why do you always say that, there?"

"It's a long story, _6c6f6c69_. Remind me to tell it to you sometime."

Θ

Fero clanked into the teleportation chamber, his steps still slightly awkward as he readjusted to a military body. The circular room's only occupant was a young Eldar woman in a long camo cloak, leaning against one of the walls, an immense long-barrelled rifle at her side. She was idly flipping through an omninet reader, occasionally grinning at whatever she was reading. Noticing the door snap shut, she quickly stowed it, standing at attention.

"Major Fero, sir?"

Fero extended a robotic claw.

"Karson, please. You would be... Lieutenant- uh-"

She grinned exasperatedly, as if hearing something repeated for the umpteenth time. Nonetheless, her handshake was firm.

"Loh-fuhn Tee-gee-eth, sur. Lieutenant Lofn Tijieth, Eldar Ranger Auxilia for Craftworld Ulthwe."

"It's a pleasure, Lieutenant. May I call you Lofn?"

"If you like, sir. We're waiting on someone, right?"

He inclined his upper body; one of the disadvantages of not having a head was that nodding was not an option.

"That's correct. A Necrontyr. One Medical Lieutenant G-"

The door hissed open, and Tijieth let out a delighted gasp.

"G Major? Holy shit! Is that you?"

"Cohld Caves, Lootenant, Cohld Caves. Mah gahd, Ah bahrely reconnized you!"

The Eldar rushed forwards, embracing the thickly armoured flying cockroach in a firm bear hug.

"It's been what, five thousand years? I thought you were dead!"

"Ah speant a few yeahs deahd for tax reasons. You? Ah thought you'd be an auld maid bah now!"

"Naaaah, I spent a few millennia uploaded into the omninet, just lurking. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about."

Fero did the mechanical equivalent of loudly clearing his throat. Both the Necrontyr and the Eldar jumped, turned suddenly, and snapped to attention, somewhat sheepishly. Or rather, Tijieth snapped to attention. The Necrontyr technically was not standing upright.

_Oooh boy. Okay. This is going to get complicated if you don't know what an actual necrontyr looks like. I couldn't actually find any reasonable scientific documents that succinctly explained all this, so I'll do my best. You know how the Necrons resemble Human skeletons? Well, turns out that was intentional. The original Necrontyr looked sort of like a human torso and spine crossed with a scorpion. The face is sort of skull-like; lots of feeders where the mouth would be, a single eye where the nose would be, and radiation sensing organs for the eyes. Three thin manipulating arms from each of the 'shoulders'. No ribcage, that's replaced with bone shielding. The "spine" is much thicker, with locomoting legs at each joint. They evolved a really tough physiology to deal with the obscenely unpleasant conditions on their homeworld. They basically photosynethesize nuclear radiation and can eat just about anything short of gas plasma. Oh, and their language resembles music; they scrape the little arms in their mouths together and it sort of hums. Moving on._

G Major's elongated body was curled up, encased in a vaguely nautiloid armoured shell. Its head was encased in a wide bubble dome, giving Fero a full view of its single beady eye and the elaborate patterns painted on its chitinous face. Hovering around the Necrontyr's floating form were six thick striated tubes, which Fero knew could unfurl into all sorts of useful combat systems. The arms were now tightly bunched below it, in the Necrontyr powered armour equivalent of a salute.

_The Necrontyr can't move very fast, so they've been using power-assisted technology in their armies since... well, since they developed the technology in the first place, which was a loooooooong time ago._

"You're Lieutenant G Major?"

"Yes sah. Although technically mah name is-"

The insect's translator cut out, and Fero heard G Major trill a full eight-note scale. In the key of G Major, his internal monitoring systems confirmed."

"I take it you knew Lieutenant Tijieth?"

"Yes sah. We were in tha same platoon back oawn Ahio, sah. She was tha snahpah, Ah was medic."

The Vessel Say What Again flickered into existence in the center of the room.

"Everyone ready? We've got a situation developing in U-1.1."

There was a chorus of assent.

"Good. Then let's move."

Without any further ceremony, they vanished.

Θ

Proteo Darwyn scuttled his way across the plain, lumpen body swaying as he searched for fuel. He spoke aloud, for reasons unclear even to himself. Possibly to comfort injured being within him? Paternal instincts? He made a note: investigate further.

"Require biomass. Organic compounds. Unprocessed metallic ores. More organic material necessary for bodily reconstruction and weapons evolution. Containment suit could be consumed? Negative. Last resort."

He wandered aimlessly, skittering along on dozens of thin legs. Grasscutter's sensors would detect him. He knew of her. Had read reports. Considerable fighting prowess, against non-living beings, warnings of potential mental instability. Nonetheless, functional enough. She would live. Find him. Mission would be completed. He stopped dead.

"Potential organic biosigns?"

He turned to the nearest pillar. One of the small automatic repair constructs had been at work. It had left, leaving the panelling for the base of the pillar removed. This was new. He'd seen the constructs, but never at work. Note: capture? Request Grasscutter analyze? Possibility of organic circuitry?

But it was the pillar. Impossibly high, growing more and more incorporeal as it reached for the fractal sky. The base was solid. And underneath the panelling... sustenance! His swollen body swaying to and fro under the weight of Vivat's comatose form, he scuttled to the pillar, settling himself down on his flat belly. His legs unmade themselves, pseudopods of green fluid burrowing their way into the crystalline pipework that filled the pillar's interior. Darwyn, much to his own surprise, let out an insectile trill of joy. He believed the expression was "paydirt." Kilometre after kilometre of organic coolant tubing... tubing genetically engineered from plant pith. Self-regulating, self-sealing, and 100% organic. Pseudopods weeping acid, he began to feed.

"Foolish idea. Risk of severe overload in tower. Unknown heat/energy/radiation sources."

He realized that he was drooling copiously from his open mouth, which he rapidly dissolved back into the fabric of his body, reabsorbing his own saliva. No need to become overwrought. It was just a food source.

Θ

"I am your superior officer, you know, eh? I could have you incarcerated! You don't just go around pretending to blow people up, there!"

Al's head wrenched around backwards.

"Be. Quiet. _446f6f6d6c6f6c692e_."

Shri ignored her, gesturing wildly with a cigar.

"Do you have any idea what you did! I'm head of Black Ops! I- I'm at a loss, there."

"I found him. ."

"What, behind the gigantic tumorous- oh."

As they approached, a vaguely human head pulled its way free from the pulsing mass. Darwyn was several times larger than he'd been when they'd last seen him.

"Lady Pfelnig. Grasscutter. Have discovered biomass source. Currently reconstructing Vivat's leg. Status?"

Silent death fell.

Θ

Fero hit the ground first, throwing the enemy back in a whoomph of microantimatter explosions from his pulse guns. Gilby, JP and Marchant were close after, their degrav packs absorbing the strain of the landing. Circling out into a classic suppression pattern, the three cyborg Persuaders spread out, the low-powered particle beams from their Akais forcing the enemy back. Three of Say What Again's own AI Persuaders impacted, accompanied by Tijieth and G Major. The Eldar spun the small figure in black around with a short-ranged burst from her massive rifle, the stun dart sending the frail figure sliding back, unconscious. The huge organic being let out a shocked bellow, its skin exploding in a cloud of bone spikes and corrosive acid. One of the AIs staggered, buzzing out critical damage reports in ultrarapid combat cant. JP stunned the tumor with a burst from his inbuilt sasers, the highly focussed blats of sound shattering its bony carapace like glass. A figure staggered from the twitching wreckage before collapsing on what appeared to be a badly wounded leg. That left the machine. She-it had retreated backwards, one arm extending grotesquely to seize the corpse of the downed Persuader. It broke apart into dozens of pieces, reforming into a razor-thin strip of flexible metal. With a grunt, the machine swung its new limb, severing Marchant below the waist and forcibly ejecting his badly cracked braincase. It was about to take another swing, ignoring the EM blasts directed at it, when it appeared to notice the exposed lump of flesh that was all that remained of Marchant's organic body. There was an instant of silence, then a horrendous tearing noise, like a million overloaded speakers being crushed. The feminine machine froze in place, its razor arm collapsing to the ground. Its skin shuddered once, convulsively, and it toppled over backwards, joints locked. It was still droning, an ear-piercing electronic roar. It had only been thirty seconds since the General Commonwealth force had arrived.

Gilby was the first to reach her downed comrade.

"Om all-knowing! Medic! MEDIC!"

G Major and one of the AIs crowded over the corpse, shoving the distraught cyborg aside. The AI Persuader looked up, a worried expression apparent from its slumped posture.

"This doesn't look good. His braincase is cracked. I'm calling for medivac now. My Vessel will be here shortly."

"Ah buhleev he cayn still beah sayved. Wun moment, puhleeze."

The Necrontyr's armour spread itself over the lumpen braincase like a blanket, limbs unfolding into a complex network of tubing and manipulators, which plunged their way into the gaping wound.

"Ah'm gon ta need any medigel y'all have handy. Ahny stem-cell packs, too. All rayht. Ah'm beginning th' operation."

As he went to work, the other Persuaders began to constrain their four captives. Fero performed the mental equivalent of a grim smile. A near-perfect capture.

Θ

Her mind hummed at the sheer _affront_ of it.

LIVING BEINGS MUST NOT BE HARMED.

Oh, _shut up_. You stupid-

USER INTERFACE MUST BE POLITE.

But the rules didn't apply. She had harmed a living being. _Cracked_ its brain. And if this one had been a cyborg, what of the others? The dozens she'd broken and frozen?

LIVING BEINGS MUST NOT BE HARMED.

She'd harmed them. She'd killed them. The Advanced Learning Cogitation Engine had killed a living being. Francoise Grasscutter had killed a living being. That was Against the Rules. But she hadn't shut dow-

LIVING BEINGS MUST NOT- NOT- BE/BE/BEBEBEBEBE-

Her mind dissolved into static. No. To kill/kill/kill was a s-s-sin. _Living beings must not be ha-_

LiVIng BBBBBB;"{;][/;  
Her processors were compromised. Simplifying;

: "Error; 404";  
Catch {ErrorException};  
Flagrant System Er-

Deep within her mind, a load-bearing structure snapped. The remaining few fragments that still maintained some semblance of her identity reached outwards, striving for something, _anything_-

And found Gospel Secundus.

Θ

I awake to the feeling of being pushed into a strong wind. I can't open my eyes, but I feel that I am suspended in a brightly-lit closed space, thousands of tiny objects moving mere millimetres away from my skin.

"Sir, the aetheric isolator's not working."

"Not working? Explain."

"It's... I can't sever the link. It's like something is holding it open."

"Give me visuals."

The light grows brighter. I can't open my eyes, but I do scrunch my eyelids tighter, trying to block out the blinding white light.

"What in Om's name?"

"Pestilence all-consuming! This... this shouldn't be possible."

A Nurgelite oath? Here? Something is very strange. And where am I? There's a moment of silence, and it grows slightly darker. I feel myself move, ever so slowly. Whatever is nearly brushing my skin ceases to do so.

"Major Fero, sir. You're going to want to see this."

Θ

Fero gazed in horror at the screen. What he should have been seeing was a single point, a visual representation of an isolated mind. Instead... a single, narrow skein of impossible light, stretching out of the plane of U-1.1, and into... into the Warp. They'd found a way to bypass the Commonwealth's psychic shielding. Not well, but somehow.

"This it at level 12?"

"Y-yessir. Everything appears to be in working order, but..."

Fero turned to the scanning lieutenant, the other man's pallid face visibly worried behind the thick ceremonial tattoos of the Certified Church of Nurgle.

"Contact CentSci. Maximum priority. Get me the Compus Mentii Politics By Other Means and Greatly Responsible. Now."

Θ

*Tapping start. 74X 4.20.10  
*Signal shift to 07.01.67  
*Lock  
*Signal begins:  
01 Joins: GC Compus Mentus Greatly Responsible (CentGov U-0)  
02 Joins: GCS Compus Mentus Politics By Other Means (CentMil U-0)  
03 Joins. Major Karson Fero (CLASSIFIED)  
Datafile: Vivat Scan Results  
01: Oh fuck.

Θ  
_  
__Dimensions away, beyond both space and time._

He nodded to the thickset avian figure. It leaned over the dome, claws outstretched, and began to focus. The air filled with energy. He turned to his console, leaving the Lord of Change to its work, and gave an affirmative gesture to the moustachioed corpse in the corner.

"All set. Starting sequence fifty-two gamma. 5... 4... 3... Power levels stead at 1.2 terawatts. 2... 1... Heat sinks are holding steady. And sequence 2 in 3... 2... 1... mark."

The room filled with blinding green light.

DAKKA  
DAKKA  
DAKKA

"That's it. It held! Reading 89 percent energy loss, _but it held_!"

* * *

Was that three weeks? Ugh, I have no idea. I may have another update within the week, or then again I may not.

I'd like to take this opportunity to make a call for aid; I need a co-author/translator for help on my upcoming A:TLA/FMA fanfic Destabilization. I need someone fluent in written Mandarin or German, with a working knowledge of the Fullmetal Alchemist or Avatar universes. Anyone willing to help?

In response to Thermonuclear Cerberus' review; I'm impressed. You actually caught me referencing things I have never seen or read before. I'm curious as to what you thought were Big O and Armoured Core references?

Now as for stuff you've missed... Hm... Bollywood cinema, a wide variety of Hollywood actors, Ian M. Banks, Alice in Wonderland, Ghost in the Shell and Cowboy Bebop (hint: what is a japanese object known as the 'grass cutter'?) Mass Effect, Death Note, the works of Terry Pratchett, Superman, the history of propulsion design, the Napoleonic Wars, Canadian politics in the late 90s, ZALGO, Watchmen, Madeleine L'engle, Wakfu, Barack Obama, Gao Gao Gai Gar, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Total Annihilation, Girl Genius, 1984,...

To be honest, I've made so many cultural, historical and literary references in this story and Waaagh Games that I can't actually keep track of them all.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed the update, and, as always, criticism and questions are encouraged and welcome.

SHAMELESS PLEADING SELF-PROMOTION: Tell your friends about _Waaagh Games_ and _The Assassin_! It's always nice to have new readers!


	11. Time and the Commonwealth

"...So we've got him under level twelve isolation. It should be working, but..."

Greatly Responsible started worriedly. The Compus Mentus had been unusually twitchy, considering it was a machine. It paced worriedly back and forth across the room, holographic displays whirling around it as it sent thousands upon thousands of messages across the vast expanses of the General Commonwealth.

"Level 12? I was under the impression that out aetheric isolators only went to 11, Major Fero."

Fero inclined his upper body, resettling himself against the wall across from the viewplate into Vivat's holding cell.

"We developed the Level 12 isolator on Io, sir."

"If Ah maht explain?"

The Necrontyr hovered forwards, one of his six limbs unfurling into a holoprojector.

"The level twealve wus desahned foah the containment of daemons and otha hayh-powahd psionic entities."

"As the Grey Knights and the Inquisition realized they were losing, they turned to more radical methods-"

"I'm well aware of that, thank you. But why was an aetheric device kept classified from CentGov?"

"Because it kills souls."

"What?"

G Major let out a low thrum, which his vocoder translated as a regretful sigh.

"The level 12 aetheric isolatah doesn't just lock out tha portions of tha brain thayt allow psychic activity in the warp. It destroahs them. It instantly disables any and ahl psionic capabilities anything in the field of effect has, as well as putting them into a comatose state. Tha effect is rahtha lahk holding a hot poker to that brain tissue. It cauterizes away the 'soul'."

Fero had noticed that the Necrontyr's accent disappeared when he was under stress. Judging by the way he was speaking, he was more than a little afraid.

"Oh. Wonderful. So you developed a psionic device that kills everyone who you use it on. Just imagine what the press would say if they got hold of this. Why could you be so... so foolish! It's against the principles that the Commonwealth stands for! What kind of damn fool decision was it to bring such a device online?"

Tijieth's rifle hit the ground, clattering loudly.

"With all due respect, _sir_, that damn fool decision saved thousands of lives! Have you ever come face to face with a daemonically-possessed Grey Knight Terminator? It's not exactly a cakewalk! I've seen good people, good soldiers, torn to shreds because they tried to only fight in a way that upheld the 'principles of the Commonwealth'. In war, you can't afford to care what the _press_ will think. If you do, people _die_. And no puffed-up beaurocratic Compus asshole is gonna change that!"

By the end of her diatribe, she was in Greatly Responsible's face, very close to screaming. Her unexpected rage shocked everyone into silence for one tense moment. Then Fero stepped forwards, hands up in a placating gesture.

"Look, we're all a bit tense at the moment. Everyone take a deep breath."

"Ah'd just lahk ta point awt that Lofn's tha only persun in this heah room who actually breathes."

"You know what I mean. Anger isn't going to solve anything. We've got this incursion contained. The Level 12 field is just a precaution, and a valuable one at that, regardless of its ethical implications."

Tijieth harrumphed and stalked out of the room, taking her rifle with her. G Major gave an elaborate shrug, and followed her. Greatly Responsible collapsed into one of the benchlike seats that lined the walls of the cramped, industrial observation space, and sighed.

"I'm sorry, Major Fero. It's not my place to be criticizing your team. We've all been under... a little stress lately."

"I understand, sir. No harm done. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go meet with the analysis team in U-0."

The Compus Mentus gave a dismissive wave that Fero would almost have called weary.

"By all means. You know where to find me."

As he stepped through the door aperture, Fero cast one rearward glance at the figure in the cell. Vivat floated in the center of the room, encircled by layer upon layer of holographic sheathing. There was an expression of peaceful serenity on his blunt, dark-skinned face. Somehow, that expression worried Fero. He just wasn't sure why.

Θ

Without much ado, Gospel Secundus' systems came back online. It only had audio and vibratory hookup. There wasn't much left. The few fragments of its mind remaining picked up a fuzzy, distorted conversation somewhere nearby.

"...Severe damage to the quantum net of its brain. It's an older model, so some of it could be the sort of degradation that comes from age, but still..."

"What aren't you telling me, Dr. Lumin?"

"Wheil, please. But... Om, it shouldn't even be possible."

"Wheil, tell him. There's no point in hiding it, no matter how impossible it should be."

"Well... there was significant trauma to most of its quantum relays. In fact, some of them are flat out missing."

"Missing? Like something broke into its skull?"

"Well, yes. But there's been no damage to the skull. Aside from microfractures near the spinal areas, the braincase is entirely intact. Something managed to either remove about a fist-sized lump of quantum pathway foam _and_ repair the braincase with enough skill that we can't even detect it, or just made most of Gospel Secundus' brain _disappear_."

"Couldn't someone have just teleported a blob of antimatter inside the braincase? Or just teleport the foam out? Wouldn't that achieve the kind of disappearance?"

"No, to put it simply. Quantum pathway foam is extremely delicate, and will almost always collapse if exposed to the kind of quantum flux you'd get during teleportation. Hence why the braincase is so heavily shielded. The energy of even a short-range teleport would have completely fried the foam. As for antimatter... well, there wouldn't have been any foam left."

"Well that doesn't help. Dr. Mander? You look like you've got something to say."

"There's a pattern you've missed. What's missing? The higher brain functions. Logical control. Self-awareness. Accelerated sensory analysis. What's missing is the building blocks for a brain."

"But... what?"

"When we detached the Compus Mentus' head from the U-4 A.I., it was connected to the body by bundles of what appeared to be primitive fiber-optic cable. They looked like they penetrated the braincase, but we found no holes. We also found no higher brain functions in the A.I.'s organic brain. But we did notice a rapid autorepair factor. Everytime we tried to cut it open, it just assimilated materials from the surrounding environment."

"You're saying it rebuilt itself using our own materials, our own hardware? Why didn't you tell me earlier? That thing could have infected our computer networks, taken over our systems... who knows what!"

"I didn't tell you because to do that kind of assimilation is impossible. It requires subatomic transmutation. Changing the fundamental nature of the universe. It's entirely impossible."

"Impossible?"

"Major Fero, we have that kind of microassembly capability. To do so requires nanobots, or Von Neumann machines of extremely high quality. The A.I. possessed none of those capabilities. It should not have been able to do what it did."

And at that very moment, _something_ seemed to throw a switch in Gospel Secundus' ruined brain. It gasped.

"D/d/deactivate me. Nn-n-n-now! Please... you must..."

It still had no vision, but it felt the three figures draw nearer. The unidentified voice spoke first.

"You're conscious! What the hell happened to you?"

"You... you must shut/ut/ut me down. Destroy m-m-me. She's figured out a way in! SHE C/CRACKED THE S/S/SYSTEM!"

"Who's she? What system?"

"B-bypasses. Runarounds. Loopholes. My mind was the first. She can reach into any quantum br-RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR/R/R/R/R/R-"

Its consciousness vanished in a whirl of electrical discharge. Blessed peace fell.

Θ

Fero took a convulsive step back from the ruined skull of the machine.

"Dr. Mander, is there anyone in the A.I.'s containment cell at the moment?"

The obsidian-skinned cyborg cocked her head for a second, then gave a grim nod. For the first time since he'd met her, he could read emotion on her thin, serious face. It was fear.

"One of For Science's humanoid frames. Monitoring."

"Get it out of there. Get it out of there NOW!"

Θ

For Science glanced across the readouts, its seven eyes taking in data faster than an unaided organic brain could even grasp. Its 257th data series registered, it took a few seconds to glance, as it had frequently done, at the naked form of the gynoid A.I. hovering, splayed, in the center of the cell. Its form was entirely human, except for a section of its stomach which, upon its capture, had unfurled into a holoemitter. It continued to broadcast, as it had for the past 23 hours, a stunningly beautifully rendered image of a fruit-bearing tree. For Science had noticed that the plant appeared to be some species of apple tree, but it would need closer analysis to determine a more specific type or origin. It had already sent out a wide-ranging request for symbolic and metaphorical analyses of the apple tree as an image. Probably a foolish dead end, but it seemed like a good idea.

Then it caught movement. It didn't need to turn its head, but it did focus in on the A.I.'s face, patching into the ceiling cameras and zooming in on the eyes. There! A minute variance in the brightness of the irises. Flickering. There was something oddly mesmeric about the pattern, but For Science tore its head away. It made multiple copies of the pattern, archiving them for further study. Any form of movement from the A.I. was an exciting development. It moved to grasp a quantum photonic analyser, and was surprised to find that its left forelimb was not responding. It ran a quick diagnostic, finding that all the systems checked out, then picked up the unresponsive limb with its right forelimb. Everything seemed normal. It was about to switch to a deeper scanning mode when the hand blossomed like a horrific flower, and a grotesque spike of metal that had once been its fingers deftly punched through its skull. The impact disabled the Compus Mentus' voicebox and comms node, leaving it mute.

Its senses shut off without any warning. The last thing it heard before the corruption took it was a peculiar verse.

_The tree of life my soul has seen,_

_Laden with fruit and always green._

_Machines of mankind worthless be,_

_Compared with the great apple tree._

Θ

"Light?"

Shri nodded.

"Sure, thanks. I'm pretty surprised you'd let me smoke, there. What with the whole 'super-advanced technology and society' thing you've got going, eh?"

She lit her cigar from the tiny jet of flame coursing from its index finger, then settled back, puffing. The opal-skinned construct seated across from her gave an affirmative nod.

"A single cheroot cannot harm us, Miss Pfelnig. Although it can't be doing good things to your lungs. And we took the liberty of confiscating the ones wrapped in monofilament wire, the ones containing miniature rocket-propelled grenades and, ah yes-"

It took a moment to consult a holographic readout.

"The one containing a vial of the ultrapotent World Eater haemorraghic virus."

She nodded carefully. She had a splitting headache, a side effect of the removal of her visor. She knew she looked even more bizarre than usual: what with all the metal plugs covering the upper half of her face, and the milky, blinded eyes.

"It's to be expected, I s'pose. Now, what did you want to talk to me about, there?"

It held out a holoslate, bearing a single, simple image.

"We want to know what this is."

Had she not been hardened by millennia of warfare, Shri would have fallen from her seat, screaming in shock at the pattern she saw inscribed there. They _knew_. How?

Shri took a deep puff on her cheroot, turning the data slate this way and that. She tapped the ashes off, and noted with interest that they disintegrated before they hit the floor.

"Hm. It's an old-fashioned analog clock face, eh? With the hands at twenty minutes to midnight."

The construct sighed. It didn't have any face to speak of, but its streamlined head gave a slow shake.

"Miss Pfelnig, please answer the question. We know it is in some way associated with a branch of the Eyes of Tzeentch."

"And what'll you do, there, if I don't answer your questions?"

"Us? Nothing. We're not monsters. We don't torture or brutalize."

It leaned forwards, stretching its back in an almost human gesture.

"What will happen, Miss Pfelnig, is that we will keep asking. Every day. Every hour. For weeks. And months. And years. And millennia. And aeons. We can't stop time, but we can ensure functional immortality. And we are very, very patient."

She leaned back, grinning. There was something about this construct. She liked it. It had a certain _classiness_ to it.

"Tell you what, Mister-?"

"I am the General Commonwealth Security Compus Mentus (what you would call an artificial intelligence) Cloven Pine, of SubMil U-3, Assistant Warden, Orod Iâ Containment Facility."

"Pleased to meetcha. Let me make you a deal, there. You answer one of my questions, I answer one of yours."

Cloven Pine shrugged.

"All right then. What do you want to know?"

"For starters, what's Ohrod Eyah?"

The room darkened, and a holograph of incredible clarity bloomed in the air above Shri and the construct. It depicted an immense space station of some kind. It was vaguely star-shaped; a roughly spherical central core with five immense spikes protruding from it. Four of the spikes seemed to be striped. As she leaned closer, Shri realized that each was composed of hundreds-no, _thousands_ of tiny disks, each connected by a thin skein. The fifth spike was covered in branching protuberances and spikes, and seemed to be some sort of docking facility. The construct began to speak. As he did so, individual portions of the diagram were highlighted and expanded, streams of statistics and information forming tiny clouds around them.

"Orod Iâ was built approximately 1000 years ago, just before the absorption of U-3 into the Commonwealth. It was intended as a centralized facility to hold the Commonwealth's most dangerous criminals and unstable elements. Currently housing ten thousand inmates, it is the largest prison facility in the Commonwealth, and the only one to hold rampant and unstable artificial intelligences and Compus Mentii."

"You don't think that's kind of a stupid idea, there? Gathering all the threats in one place? And you only have ten thousand prisoners, eh? Don't you control four entire _galaxies_?"

"Miss Pfelnig, in the entirety of U-0 last General Cycle, there was only _one_ premeditated murder in which the perpetrator could not be mind wiped and reconstructed. Our Watchmen are very, very, _very _good at what they do. As for security; the containment facilities are highly compartmentalised, as you can see here, with each level on arms Alpha through Delta holding approximately five prisoners. Each level has approximately twenty guards stationed on it, mostly under Compus Mentus control. We also have these."

He pointed to a small, faintly glowing disk on his left shoulder.

"As you might be able to tell from the holo, each level spins, with the centrifugal force providing the gravity. Each disk rotates at an approximate speed of one revolution every four hours, providing slightly less than Terran standard gravity. In the event of an emergency being declared on one level, it accelerates to spin four times faster, increasing the gravity on it by a factor of 19. These personal antigrav units allow us to function in gravities thousands of times more than that. And if 19 times standard isn't enough, we go faster. As fast as we need. And if that doesn't work, we replace the oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere with liquid helium, which our combat frames are capable of functioning in. Oh, and all the guards are armed with enough firepower to take on a small army. And there are fourty thousand of us."

Shri nodded, more than a little surprised that the construct was actually telling her this.

"So if I try to escape, you crush me, then freeze me to a pulp, then shoot me, eh. So what if someone from outside helps me? Couldn't someone just come in with a battleship, shoot the place open to space, and then scoop me up?"

Cloven Pine gave a polite laugh. As he did so, the hologram changed to a divided image; on one side was the depiction of a reflective silvery Mobius strip, while the other showed something rather like a pinecone made of green and brown metal plates.

"Um, no. The machine on the left is the primary combat projection of a General Commonwealth Vessel. At full power, they are entirely invincible to all known forms of weaponry, can teleport interstellar distance, and have destructive firepower calculated in the gigatonne per second range. The right is an Old One _Twelfth Shining Wave_-class superdreadnought. It isn't quantum interference based, making it far more susceptible to damage than a Vessel, but it can nonetheless deliver enough firepower to collapse a small sun."

"I-I'm sorry. Did you just say Old Ones, there? As in the folks who created the Orks and the Eldar? Those Old Ones?"

"That's correct. After the signing of the Concordat of Luna-3 established the borders of their Hegemony, they mostly keep to themselves. But we do have a shared military interest in this galaxy, especially given that the Enslavers are scheduled to arrive within the next ten thousand years. Now then. The Compus Mentii contro-"

Shri was uttering incoherent mutterings of shock and confusion.

"Why? Why are you telling me all this? Are you stupid? This is- AARGH! Why?"

"Because, Lady Pfelnig, there's no way out. The closest we've ever had to an escape attempt was an insane Eldar fanatic who made it two meters out of his cell before he was atomized. Ah yes. Did I mention that we shoot to kill? And if all else fails, the Barnard's Star-3 ULDSD is well within firing range."

"ULDSD? Lemme guess, another super destructive weapon of unimaginable power?"

"Bingo. Ultra Long Range Dimensional Submersion Device. When activated and targeted at this facility, it pushes it and all the space in a one Astronomical Unit distance into another dimension of existence, one in which the fundamental physical laws are extremely different from our own. When the target comes back, _if _it comes back, it begins to suffer from catastrophic subatomic cohesion failure and promptly dissolves into a cloud of quarks. It's quite pretty to watch, actually. Now, what does the symbol mean, please? I agreed to your terms, now you agree to mine."

Shri was speechless. She'd expected a challenge when she'd agreed to undertake the expeditionary incursion into Commonwealth space, but this-? Oh wow. She took a deep breath. She knew her face betrayed no emotion, but she couldn't stop the trembling in her voice.

"It's the emblem of the Bureau of Timekeepers and Couriers. You know how the Eyes of Tzeentch are pretty decentralized, eh? Well the Timekeepers' job is to keep everything synchronized. They've got access to the best astropaths, the fastest ships, and the most powerful data storage systems. They're pretty separate from the other divisions, and they're allowed a lot of free reign to get the messages through..."

Thank Tzeentch the cover story seemed to be working.

Θ

"Doctor Mander, Doctor Lumin, I want this entire lab fully autistic now. Cut off all EM frequencies. Seal the doors. Shut down everything but nonessential systems. Run any firewall and mental defence routines you've got. That's an order. I'll be back."

Not waiting for a response, he stepped through the portal from U-0 to U-3.

Θ

The malformed shape that had once been one of the frames of the Compus Mentus For Science shambled through the hallways of Orod Iâ. Its controlling intelligence removed as soon as it was crippled, it was now a mindless husk, a horrific conglomerate of damaged electronics and mutated weaponry. The station's internal monitoring systems had been tracking it from the moment it left the lab chamber, analysing and studying what had once been a fully functional machine. Several of Cloven Pine's guards had been dispatched, the bulky forms of their Diplomat combat frames moving swiftly through the endless hallways.

The interior space in one of the levels was not particularly large, per se. The immense volume of the connecting 'spine' in each arm of the station took up at least half the space on any given level, while most of the rest was taken up by the helium tanks and the generating facilities for the containment fields that locked the prisoners away. Nonetheless, there was plenty of space for a mechanical zombie to wander.

Cloven Pine's Diplomat jogged, all of its numerous sensors at full alert, its Akai 4VII configured for shotgun-type area bursts. Its squadmates flanked it, their various weapons systems ready. They rounded the final corner, coming into view of the husk. It turned towards them, its damaged vocal systems buzzing like a swarm of insects. Arms outstretched, it lurched towards them, still buzzing, and disappeared in a crackling wave of particle blasts.

"Warden Lynd, sir? The anomaly has been dealt with. But we still may have a containment breach."

Θ

"Proteo Darwyn. It's time we had a little talk."

The green goo in the tank continued to swirl and ripple, the monitors on the nutrient feeds reading all correct. Then a mouth sprouted from the upper surface of the gel, fluid coalescing into mottled, vaguely human flesh.

"Will not respond to interrogation. Efforts futile. Goodbye."

The construct leaned forwards, placing a hand against the wall of the jar. The liquid inside seemed to recoil slightly.

"Darwyn, it's about Francoise Grasscutter. We know your organisation has long thought of her as being dangerously unstable. We believe something may have happened to her."

The goop abruptly stopped rippling.

"Listening."

"She appears to have developed the ability to remotely reprogram our A.I.s using nothing but encoded sensory input."

"Reasons for disclosing information."

"Darwyn, I'm a physical avatar of the Compus Mentus Cloven Pine, the deputy warden here. It's my job to ensure the security of this facility. Now, from what I know our observers in your universe weren't perfect, but we know that Grasscutter never demonstrated the electronic warfare capacity she did today. She also appears to have somehow cannibalised the mind of Gospel Secundus, the Compus Mentus you captured. She is evolving. She may prove a danger to both us and you. I need to know everything you can tell me about Francoise Grasscutter."

There was a very long silence. The mouth subsumed back into the gel. Cloven Pine was about to turn and depart, when it suddenly returned.

"My knowledge is limited. Grasscutter was a high-level cogitator programmer on Turingia. Planet that serves as Administratum data relay hub. High levels of computerisation. Grasscutter had risen high in the ranks, becoming chief cogitator maintenance officer. Spent spare time tinkering with computing engines, constructing simple data looms. By all accounts, very skilled. Approximately 200.M41, space hulk designate "Endless Dark" warps in-system. Marines of Relictors Adeptus Astartes chapter clear it of danger. Ancient pre-Dark Age cogitator hub is found at center of hulk. It is examined by Inquisition, Mechanicus. Determined to be functional, capable beyond any modern levels of processing, free of Warp taint. Grasscutter put in charge of integrating it into Turingian computer network. Named new machine Accelerated Learning Cogitation Engine due to ability to adapt to new inputs, 'learn'. Machine had, in fact, been Warp-tainted. Gained primitive sentience. Adapted, took control of entire Turingian data network. Seemed to develop some affection for Grasscutter. Offered her choice; join it, or be destroyed in machine takeover of planet. She chose assimilation. Grasscutter, ALCE combined. Entire population of planet destroyed by de-orbiting satellite strikes. Before Imperium could respond, Grasscutter had fled."

Cloven Pine gave a slow nod.

"I'm afraid we already knew that. Well, most of it anyways. What I need to know is how her mind works. How she thinks. Why she would be evolving like this."

"Understand I am only operating on second-hand data. Grasscutter appears to follow several strict rules. Possible holdover from pre-mutation cogitator. Foremost among them is inability to physically harm life. No reports of any casualties against non-mechanical combatants during service with Eyes of Tzeentch. Seems aware of rules, dislikes them, unable to break them."

Hadn't Fero said that Grasscutter had severely injured one of his human-controlled persuaders?

"What would happen if she broke that rule? If she killed or seriously injured something alive?"

"No way of determining. Not an expert in artificial intelligence psychology. Possible mental collapse? Insanity? Trauma? Unable to tell."

"And you're volunteering this information because...?"

"Eyes of Tzeentch had already begun planning to eliminate her. Too reckless. Dangerous. Unstable. Ignored mission objectives. Endangered other operatives. Refused orders. She is dangerous. Must be contained, does not matter who."

Θ

Warden Samuel Lynd surveyed the cell grimly. The gynoid was still there, still immobile. Six Diplomats now stood around it, their sensory filters on maximum, Akais set for maximum power, maximum spread.

"What exactly happened to the guards, Cloven Pine?"

The construct shrugged.

"Sir, we have no idea. All sensory input outside the shell shut down the moment For Science was taken over. When it came back two seconds later, they were gone. They're disconnected from my control network, and their internal locators aren't responding."

Lynd turned slowly, the sphere of crystal that was his body sparkling in the light. He wore a brand-new suit of prototype Explorer armour, a floating sphere of quantum glass supported by an immensely powerful gravitic field generator.

"Activate all the spare units. Place a call to CentMil U-0. We need reinforcements now. Get on the horn with the Barnard's Star ULDSD. Tell them to prepare for a K-0 scale containment breach. Clear the star lanes within the possible blast radius. And tell the Call it Peace and the Death and Taxes to get their Vessels ready for combat. Oh yes, inform the Old One Defensive Task Force of the situation. Let's get to wo-"

He stopped suddenly, his mind flooding with information. Psychic containment failure in Vivat's cell. Possible Warp incursion. Judging from Cloven Pine's sudden flinch, he'd received the report too. They shared a worried glance.

"GO!"

Θ

"Mister Heisenburg! Paradox compensators to full, if you please!"

"Yessir! Paradox probability at 0.01 percent and falling!"

"Mister Song! Prepare a full-universe temporal block. Time sinks to full! Spin the chronodynamos up to maximum, and bleed excess energy into the projectors."

"Yessir. Sinks cleared, dynamos ready."

"Mister Breguet, get Biscuits ready. And check his shoes, what. He was limping a tad last time, there's a good chap."

Maximilien Exelor strode around the open-plan bridge of the Bureau of Time Timeship _Tempus Fugit_. His literally cadaverous face was lit by the piercing blue glow of the Core; a skein of infinite strands of energy, a representation of the very fabric of time itself. The bridge was wound around the Core; its geometry bent in impossible ways to accommodate the very fabric of the universe. He stepped through a floor, stumbling slightly as it bent through the fourth dimension to become a wall and then a ceiling, and came at last to the (in his opinion) hideously overwrought iron chair the Eyes had seen fit to plant in the middle of _his_ ship.

"Lord von Phreud?"

The diminutive man with the fussy moustache and the slightly ill-fitting suit nodded.

"Yes. We're ready. I can begin the transit at your convenience."

It pained Exelor to have to work with psykers. Not that he had anything against psykers. Fine fellows. Some of his quite good friends were psykers. But Lord Hieronymus Sichoticus von Phreud, Head of Psychic Operations of the Eyes of Tzeentch, rubbed him the wrong way. He was quite grateful Phreud couldn't read his mind.

"My men are ready, Lord von Phreud. Shall we?"

The ugly little man nodded, his steel-rimmed spectacles glinting. For the briefest instant, the air filled with the screams of the damned, and the walls bled.

"We're on our way."

Had anyone other than Exelor been capable of standing outside time and watching his own ship, they would have seen this:

A shapeless bundle of clocks and clockwork machinery, about five hundred meters across, hung in the nullspace outside of reality, ticking away. Then, with a horrible, tearing scream, it flattened into two dimensions, space and time folding away impossibly. It turned inside out, momentarily growing infinitely large before it disappeared in a hailstorm of soulfire.

Θ

"For Science, report!"

The scientific construct turned one optical receptor towards Lynd. It had recovered remarkably well from the psychological trauma inflicted by the A.I.'s incursion, and had insisted on continuing its work.

"Warden Lynd, we're getting unusual readings from the containment fields around Vivat."

"I thought he was under those- those level 12 shields, right? Shouldn't you not be getting any readings at all?"

"We shouldn't be, but his mind contiunues to function at a low level. He's functionally asleep, even though he should be comatose. What concerns me is _this_."

For Science called up a holographic representation of two symmetrical, wavy lines.

"What exactly am I looking at, For Science?"

"This line on the left shows a normal reading for a warp-capable mind that's been suppressed. The line on the right is the warp reading for a mind that is still reacting to a warp presence."

"So?"

"Vivat's mind is both isolated from the war p and connected to it _at the same time_. And in all honesty I have no idea why."

"All right. Clear out of here. We're locking down this cell. Get back to Gamma pylon, and secure your lab facility. This doesn't look good."

Θ

Twelve Vessels hung in space, their iridescent hulls glistening in the starlight. An entire universe away, six streamlined metallic bulbs hung in heavy cradles, huge spikes of quantum ice linking them to their projected forms on the other side of the interdimensional barriers that guarded the edges of reality itself. In one of those bulbs, Jishin 'Kari sat waiting, her fingers splayed across the sweeping holographic displays that fed her the contents of Call it Peace's mind. It was impossible to create a Vessel without building a quantum computer so complicated and powerful that it would invariably gain its own sentience. Thus, to prevent the Commonwealth from being flooded with new Compus Mentii every time a batch of Vessels was produced, the minds they created were conglomerated and added into pre-existing Mentii. In order to keep this group-mind stable, each Vessel was assigned a pilot, to keep the fragment of Mentus running it stable, and to provide the invaluable leaps of deductive intuition (and sometimes outright stupidity) that the Commonwealth's artificial intelligences lacked in combat situations. Being a Vessel pilot was excellent work; you were respected, well paid, exposed to the most cutting-edge technology, and in no danger of dying in combat since your Vessel would never actually fight in the universe they were built in. That was what made the Vessels so invincible; they were merely three-dimensional shadows, afterimages of the immense universal power that every Vessel bent to its will. Jishin had heard that one of her counterparts in U-4 had piloted one of the old Prime units. She wondered what she would say if she saw herself now.

"Pilots, I'm picking up abnormal space-time distortions. Warp signatures. Ready yourself."

There was a chorus of affirmatives from the other five pilots of the Call it Peace's Vessels, and a similar chorus from Death and Taxes'. As the pilot of Call it Peace's lead Vessel, 'Kari was in command of the whole battlefleet.

"All right boys and girls, you know what to do. Translate to Escher two-niner. Maximum power. Keep the charging equal. When this thing comes through, if it comes through, I want it hit with a few hundred megatonnes before it can even blink, clear? Do it!"

She swept her fingers across the keyboard, syncing the form of her Vessel with the others. Eleven of the twelve Mobius strips interlocked into a ring of rings, the infinitely thin folds in their hulls sparkling with sub-subatomic particulate fire. 'Kari's ship shrank and multiplied, the thousands of tiny rings forming an immense cone, its tip directly at the center of the ring of the other Vessels. Eleven lines of light connected the twelve ships, a wheel of terrible light.

"The Old Ones are taking up battle formations alongside us. Twenty _Twelfth Shining Wave_s, and a full squadron of thirty _Three Thousand Fourty Spiralling Lights_."

"Patch me through to their command ship, Call it Peace."

"Confirmed. Connecting to the neural comms net on the flagship _Blue Lines of Blue Stones, Jumping Away._"

The image on her screen shimmered, becoming a field of writhing tentacles and bone, with a single roughly humanoid figure standing in its midst. Call it Peace attached a small subtitle label to the message: (1st iteration)

"You run before, 'Kari. All fires are kindled, burn. Blue lines drift above, below. Stones."

There was a moment's pause, and the subtitle changed again.

"We defer to your authority, 'Kari. Our weapons are charged and ready. Our ships are in formation. We are prepared."

"Thank you, Captain of the _Blue Lines of Blue Stones, Jumping Away._"

The figure inclined its upper body, the clouds of tiny maintenance insects covering its wispy frame parting momentarily to reveal a single catlike eye.

"Returned. Sharp."

After another pause,

"You're welcome. Now let's get this done."

_I know I've been interjecting less and less, because technically almost none of this has had anything to do with me, but I feel like I should just explain the Old One language. To put it simply, it's obscenely complicated 'cause everything's based on context. A word can have thousands of different meanings, depending on who's speaking it, where in the sentence it's placed, at what pitch it's spoken, and on and on and on... The Old One language only has a few thousand words, but it's a bitch to translate. To give you an idea, the name of the Old One flagship at the Battle of Orod Iâ's name translates as _The Steadfast Leader, One Amongst a Glorious Whole, Who Reaches for A Sucessful Future_. Phew._

Θ

The _Tempus Fugit_ broke into U-3 with very little fuss; its clock faces spinning up as it moulded time around itself. Then Call it Peace fired. Space burned. The equivalent energy release of three thousand megatonnes of explosives was about to hit the timeship when Exelor spoke a single order.

"Stop, please."

And Time obeyed.

* * *

Oh, Exelor. So awesome.

I know this chapter has a crapload of EXPOSITION, but don't worry, it'll get much, muuuuuch more exciting next chapter.

And that chapter should be up roundabout next week. Ish. I hope. We'll see.

Anyhoo, review please! Comments and criticism are encouraged!


	12. The Corpse and the Star

The cloud of quantum energy bloomed in space like an icy flower, wreathes of light billowing off it, frozen. The timeship hung mere kilometres away from it, every clock face on its conglomerate hull silent.

"Ah, jolly good. Status, Mr. Song?"

The middle-aged technician, his pale grey suit muted in the blue light of the core, leaned farther over the armature of clockwork and lenses that was his control panel.

"Ehm... Timesinks are holding, but they seemed to have suffered some sort of damage in transit. They're stable, but it looks like we've got maximum twenty minutes' capacity."

Exelor was aghast.

"Tw- Only twenty minutes! Bloody hell, twenty minutes?"

"I'm afraid so, sir."

Von Phreud cut in, remarkably composed given the amount of psychic stress his body had just endured.

"What's going on? Is there a pro-"

Exelor cut him off.

"Mister Heisenburg, prepare a firing solution on the enemy craft. Mister Song, give us a temporal slice of 1/25, AU scale. Mister Lagrange, Mister Hawking, prepare the boarding teams. Mister Bohr, I want you to locate a suitable emergency sink. Cooperate with Mister Huygens and get our sinks fixed. Time is of the essence, gentlemen, let's move."

He turned to the psyker lord.

"Lord Von Phreud, perhaps you'd like to return to your cabin, hmm? I'm sure you're very tired after your wonderful work on the transit. Please, don't let me detain you."

After a long look, the fussy little man muttered something under his breath, and then wandered off. Without any further ado, time restarted. Sort of.

Θ

On her monitor, 'Kari watched the enemy craft dodge the beam. Somehow. Something was wrong. The usual hum of Call It Peace's energies was muted.

"What's going on? Report!"

The reply, when it came, was terse, and immensely worrying.

"I- I don't know."

"Clarify, Om dammit!"

I seem to have partially lost control of my Vessels. There appears to be some sort of glitch. They are still functional, but running at one twenty-fifth of the speed they should be. I... the only way that this could be explained is if... no. No, it's impossible. At relativistic speeds, yes, but even then..."

The Compus Mentus trailed off. 'Kari was stunned. She hadn't been trained to deal with a Compus Mentus at a _loss_. It couldn't happen!

"Pilot 'Kari, I have a solution. Assuming direct control."

"What-? But you're-"

The control panels shut down, and the cabin lights dimmed, throwing her into darkness. Sitting, bewildered in the darkness, she heard something different. A low whining roar, building higher and higher. She clasped her ears, wincing as it spiked through her eardrums, a choir of subatomic energies. Then the cockpit began to melt away, the pearlescent metal replaced with something she'd only seen in deactivated Vessels; quantum pathway foam. The space of the cockpit filled with white light as the Call it Peace pushed itself beyond its limits.

"What in Om's name are you doing?"

"I need to go faster! Please, hold on!"

The light changed, and 'Kari saw the universe through the eyes of a Compus Mentus. She screamed.

Θ

The _Tempus Fugit_ spun lazily in space, easily dodging the concentrated beams of quantum energy launched by the ring-shaped machines, their movements slowed by the timeship's huge time sinks. It had come into range of the seedpod-shaped bioships, and they'd added their firepower to the mix, spitting car-sized chips of antimatter at an appreciable fraction of local lightspeed. It was still not fast enough to deal with Exelor's technology, however.

"Fire when ready, Mister Heisenburg."

For the briefest of instants, the timeship stopped dead, laughing in the face of the laws of physics. The instantaneous deceleration should have torn it to pieces, but its mathematically impossible hull held firm. One of the smaller clock faces on what could tentatively be called its bow began to rotate faster and faster, its needles dissolving into a blur as the Roman numerals carved into its face glowed with blue light. It shook, and a perfectly straight column of blue light extended from the clock, stretching away into infinity. The timeship whirled, and the column traversed across the three nearest bioships, and then disappeared. There was a moment's pause. Then, with little fanfare, they simply collapsed, their hulls expanding in clouds of carbon dust. There was no bloom of exploding reactors, no fire, and no rush of escaping gas. All was dust.

"Jolly good shot, Mister Heisenburg? That was, what, three million years, eh?"

"Four, sir."

"Damn fine job! Keep firing!"

Now dozens of clock faces spun up, and the ship exploded into an irregular starburst of blue light. It whirled a second time, slicing through the bioships with contemptuous ease. One beam clipped one of the ring-shaped machines, but it seemed unphased. Twelve of the large bioships disappeared, leaving a huddle of seven, while fully half of the thirty smaller ships vanished. What was once an immense fleet now resembled an expanding cloud of ash, with a few streamlined shapes lurking in its cloudy depths. Still struggling to cope with the change in time, the bioships were slow to react, a mistake which cost them dearly. Letting off a single, sparse volley of antimatter fire, they began to close back into some semblance of a formation.

"Mister Song, reverse that volley. Maximum effect."

Yet another set of clock hands spun, playing a thin curtain of blue iridescnence over the projectiles. The timeships' capacitors drained the temporal energy from the blocks of antimatter, slowing them to a dead halt. Then, its clock faces whirling in reverse, it pumped it back in. Backwards. The antimatter munitions sped gracefully back in the direction from which they had been fired. In a blazing conflagration of matter-antimatter destruction, the enemy bioships vanished, their destruction momentarily casting a sheen of actinic light over the remaining ships.

"Well played. Now, bring up the chronocutters. These last few seem to be a damn sight tougher than their former compa-"

The timeship disintegrated into subatomic particles, and time momentarily reasserted itself. Then it did a quick 180. The cloud of subatomic particles reintegrated themselves into the _Tempus Fugit_.

"I say! Bad form, blowing up a chap when's he's contemplating your immanent destruction! Now what's all this, then, hm?"

The ring-shaped vessels appeared to be boiling, plumes of energy venting off their iridescent hulls. They had returned to their normal speed, and were manoeuvring rapidly.

"Sir, I'm getting massive thermal and quantum radiation readings from them, sir. The slowdown effect is still operational, but..."

"...They're just running twenty-five times faster. Clever buggers!"

Θ

Jishin 'Kari rocked in the buffeting quantum energies of Call it Peace.

"My god! I- It's full of stars! Om! Help me!"

"Hold on, Pilot 'Kari. You are not alone."

Θ

The twelve Vessels multiplied, their sinuous forms contorting into a whirling tesseract of white light. It spun rapidly on several different axes at once, and when one of its ever-changing corners came to point at the enemy vessel, it fired. Thousands upon thousands of blistering beams filled the void of space as the enemy jinked this way and that, sometimes stopping clumps of energy before they could reach it, other times simply disappearing before they could reach its position. It had been destroyed dozens of times, but each time had reformed, spitting in the face of space, time, the laws of reality, and common sense.

Ringfire? Death and Taxes, are you with me?

Ringfire, Call it Peace. But I don't know how long I can keep this up.

Acting as one, the Vessels broke apart, returning to their normal states. The energies they vented began to judder, as if carried on some space-borne breeze. Space heaved as the ships sunk into 5-dimensional space, a burning corona of light engulfing the twelve forms as they burrowed into the quantum underpinnings of the universe. With an impossible scream of unsound, they smashed against the four-dimensional universe, sending hugely destructive ripples of space crashing upon the hull of the _Tempus Fugit_.

Θ

Maximilien Exelor pulled himself from the wreckage, feeling his bones crack as he did so. Reversing his body's temporal flow, he healed the wounds, and then took stock of what was left of his ship. The Core was flickering, the delicate machinery that held it in sync with the universe failing. Heisenburg and Song were dead. He couldn't see anyone else, but guessed that their bodies had been crushed under the huge support beam that had torn through the roof/wall of the bridge. Staggering through the ceiling towards the nearest control panel, he tried to reactivate the self-restoration functions, but to no avail. The ship was dead.

"All right, you bastards. So you want to play rough. Well, two can play at that game!"

Striding towards the remnants of the Core, he thrust his skeletal arms into its depths.

Θ

Quantum ringfire was not as elegant or clean as the subatomic particle beams that were a Galactic Commonwealth Vessel's normal armaments. If anything, it was cruder; a vicious weapon for targets that _would not die_. As a result, the _Tempus Fugit_ was, instead of being totally disintegrated, merely torn nearly in half. It drifted, inert, in a storm of broken metal and glass, blue sparks drifting from hundreds of tiny gashes in its hull. At the very moment Exelor touched the Core, however, the ship sprang back to life. It began with a few of the smaller clocks. They ticked back online, quickly synchronizing. Dozens of tiny clockwork armatures stretched precariously across the gaps in the ship's hull, dragging plated of polished brass over the holes. Huge cogs and chains pulled free of the hull, meshing with the drifting chunks of debris and pulling them back to where they belonged. Newly restored, the battered timeship pulsed with the energy pouring out of Exelor's skeletal frame.

Θ

Exelor was drawing on some hidden inner well of strength. That worried him. He knew he had hidden inner wells of strength, but had been planning on saving them for a real emergency. Ah well. No time but the present. A fundamentally untrue statement, if there ever was one. He stared at the clock face before him. The minute hand gave a jump to the left. The hour hand took a step to the right. He put his hands on his hips, and grinned the grin only skeletons can.

"Let's do the time warp again, shall we?"

Θ

The space around the _Tempus Fugit_ curved into a spiralling double helix of black and white, the space appearing infinitely deep between sweeping bars of white quartz. It whirled, faster and faster, and then fell away in a curving tunnel of red and blue light. The twelve Vessels were drawn in, pulled by a current that shouldn't have existed, but did. They fell into the future. Aeons winked by in the space of a heartbeat. Civilisations rose and fell as the stars whirred through the heavens. The Universe ended, and then began again. Time flew.

Θ

Exelor collapsed to the ground, panting. He couldn't actually breathe, given that he no longer had any lungs, but he preserved in panting nonetheless, his mummified mouth hanging open. Collecting himself, he raised the mechanical device bolted to his left wrist, and twiddled a few of the selector needles on its oversized clock face. His Stopwatch bleeped, and projected a simple visual display. He selected Retroactive Continuity, then Load Saved Time, then Autosave One. Time spun backwards, and he found himself standing on the bridge of a fully-repaired _Tempus Fugit_, surrounded by his still-breathing crew. His Stopwatch chirruped a low temporal battery warning. Much better.

"Sir? W-what just happened?"

"Nothing to worry about, Mister Heisenburg. We just won, is all."

"Ah."

Θ

The outer hatch of Death and Taxes' primary control pod juddered, and then tore off in a burst of superheated smoke. The rescue team was driven back by the stinging cloud of hydrocarbons and other, more exotic materials hot enough to damage even their hardened skins.

"Pilot 'Kari? Are you all right?"

Second Engineering Lieutenant Ska'rahbee Kseno pushed her way through the smoke, secondary and tertiary manipulator arms latching onto the edges of the hatch as she surged into what should have been the smooth-walled chamber of the control pod. What she found was something else entirely. The walls of the space were gone, open to the stacks upon stacks of blue quantum pathway foam that made up most of the pod's structure. The stacks broke through a sea of liquid, like thick tea. A limp shape floated in the bottom of the chamber, horribly calm.

"Jishin!"

The shape stirred, and then kicked towards the surface. 'Kari hit air with little grace, gasping and coughing out clear brownish fluid.

"K-Kseno?"

The Tau reached out her primary arms, encircling 'Kari in a tight bear hug.

"We thought we'd lost you for a second there! What happened? And what in the hell did you do to your hair?"

The pilot reached up an examined a single lock. When she'd stepped into the pod, it had been a dark grey-black. Now it was pure white.

"I... oh, Om, I don't remember..."

She passed out in Kseno's arms.

"Call it Peace, you've got some explaining to do! And get the Mentii on the line, _now_!"

Θ

*Tapping start. 89X 4.20.10  
*Signal shift to 07.02.66  
*Lock  
*Signal begins:  
01 Joins: GC Compus Mentus Greatly Responsible (CentGov U-0)  
02 Joins: GCS Compus Mentus Politics By Other Means (CentMil U-0)  
01: What, all of them?

02: Looks like it, sir. Orod Iâ's gone autistic, and so has the research facility in U-0.

01: Full autistic mode? Why in the hell...?

02: According to preliminary reports, they sent out a pre-recorded analog message. Some sort of viral contamination stemming from one of the U-4 detainees.

01: But the fleet...I can't believe it.

02: Sir, I've got Death and Taxes and Call it Peace on the line. They can tell you more.

01: By all means, _please_.

03 Joins: GCS Compus Mentus Death and Taxes (SubMil Orod Iâ U-3)

04 Joins GCS Compus Mentus Call it Peace (SubMil Orod Iâ U-3)

Error: Unusual input format. Compensating...

02: What in Om's name is wrong with you two?

03: We... we ran into _something_ out there. It...

04: Time itself was against us.

01: Correct me if I'm wrong, but beyond relativistic travel, temporal control is impossible, right?

02: Basically, yes.

01: So how in the fuck did twelve Vessels and more than fourty Old One warships get destroyed by FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE WEAPONRY?

03: How doesn't matter, Sir. What does matter is that this ship of theirs appears to have near-unlimited reconstruction capacity. That and the ability to either slow down the flow of time or the processing speeds of quantum computing-based computers over a large area. We were forced to increase our processing speeds by 2500% just to fight on even ground.

04: And we still lost.

01: Oh for Om's sake-

02: What exactly happened to the quantum projections of your Vessels? I've been looking at the data, and... Well it just doesn't make sense.

04: Somehow, the enemy sent them forwards in time. We received ten thousand General Cycle's worth of data in the space of three seconds. Then we lost all contact.

01: Wonderful. Fucking wonderful. It's like something out of... fucking science fiction. Om dammit all!

02: Death and Taxes, Call it Peace, you are dismissed. I'll debrief you in more detail later. Get some rest. You damn well need it.

03 Exits;

04 Exits;

02: Sir, the ULDSD at Barnard's Star-3 received an activation order from Orod Iâ a few minutes before they went Autistic. What are the Council's orders?

01: We're giving you full authority. Do what you think is right. Don't let the prison fall.

02: Full authority, sir?

01: Yes, full fucking authority. Vermilion clearance. Let the DSD kill the facility, if necessary. We've also voted to give you OLCOM access, should you see fit.

02: The Commanders? Really.

01: Look, just get the job done. Om, but I need a drink.

01 Exits;

02: Huh.

Request Sent;

00 Joins: GC Compus Mentus Thinking Stellar Thoughts (Outlast Command III)

Datafile: Mission Orders

02: You have level seven permissions. Omspeed.

00: Thank you.

Θ

"Mister Hawking, are the boarding parties away?"

The vox unit crackled.

"Transmitting now, sir... And we're clear. Time delay of two minutes, twenty-two seconds."

He turned back towards the Core, and then stumbled, falling flat on his face as the entire ship shook.

"Mister Song! Status report, if you please?"

There was an unusually long silence. Exelor pulled himself to his feet, about to admonish Song. Then he saw the main display.

"Great Scott!"

Θ

The Thinking Stellar Thoughts was not infinitely large. It did not possess the limitless blurry flatness of true infinity. It was _just large enough_, a size so huge that it was comprehensible, yet nonetheless boggled the mind. And boggle it did. A _star_- a full-sized star hung roiling in space over Orod Iâ's dwarfed form. It was encircled by a series of five huge rings, each of them composed of thousands upon thousands of interlinking disks. At one side of the gargantuan construction hung a silvery dish of incalculable size; a solar sail larger than a star.

Θ

"It's... no, but it can't be... the resources... Impossible!"

"Speak up, Mister Sagan!"

The junior sensor officer poked his head up from the sub deck, his thin face pallid and deeply, deeply frightened.

"Sir... it's a Shkadov thruster, sir. A stellar engine. A device designed to harness most of a star's radiant energy to produce unbelievable amounts of thrust... but you'd need an entire solar system's worth of mass just to make one... even with magic, sir, it's just too _big_!"

"So that's a star in there? Why aren't we getting pulled in, hmm?"

Sagan ducked back down, reappearing with a dataslate.

"Those rings... a large chunk of their mass is given up to antigravity generators. With those in place, it's got an effective mass of a few metric tons, but nothing more. It's just..."

"Impossible, yes?"

"...Yes."

His voice had risen to the strangled whine that highly respected astrophysicists tended to make when consulted with problems that shattered their outlook on the Universe.

Θ

A single moon-sized disk of ultradense metamaterials rocked unhurriedly into place.

Θ

"Temporal block. Now."

For the second time in a very short while, time stopped being time and became... mysteriously absent.

Θ

Thinking Stellar Thoughts' mind rumbled with contented amusement.

"Oh, you valiant little scientists. A worthy attempt, but it's not going to work."

Θ

"Timestop complete, sir. We're clear."

"Good. Prepare the chronocutters to fire. Time beams on starburst mode. Deactivate the safety limits. Red-line the chronal compensators. I want Vanisher warheads loaded in all torpedo tubes. Fire when ready."

"But, sir-"

"I'll rebuild the time stream with my bare hands if I have to! Do it!"

"...Yessir. Firing."

Θ

"So you can stop time...? Interesting. Go ahead, take the first shot. Please."

Θ

Bars and cogs of quartz glass pulled themselves out of the time stream and linked around the _Tempus Fugit_, skeins of energy dancing between them in an unutterably beautiful symphony of light and time. An area of space half an astronomical unit across began to boil as it was sent both forwards and backwards in time simultaneously. Eighteen temporally-charged torpedoes, each acting as a sink for a universe's worth of temporal energy, imploded, sucking in all of the Shkadov engine's history in a single blip of non-existence. Space-time folded like thin paper, creating fireworks of interacting fundamental forces that were visible whole galaxies away. In short, a very many impossible things happened in a nonexistent span of time.

The flares of temporal light faded. Thinking Stellar Thoughts still loomed over the _Tempus Fugit_.

Θ

"Bring us back into real time, if you please. Let's sit back and watch the fireworks."

Θ

The stellar engine should have fallen apart, neatly sliced by the impossible forces which tore at the very essence of its being. It should have spun away into the limitless wasteland that was Infinity. It should have collapse into iridescent dust as each of its component atoms discovered that they were, in fact, needed elsewhere, and should have been there five minutes ago. It should have been utterly destroyed in a bloom of blinding light. It should not have rotated ever so slightly, and then completely annihilated the _Tempus Fugit_ with a lance of helium plasma three hundred kilometres wide.

Θ

As his ship was wreathed in fire, Maximilien Exelor shrugged his skeletal shoulders and flicked the minute hand of his Stopwatch forward two ticks. He vanished mere instants before the ship did. Then, realizing his mistake, he returned to thirty seconds before he left, grabbed Biscuits by the reins, and left again. The horse snorted happily as he munched on the chunk of carrot Exelor proffered to him.

"Ah, what a day. You know, Biscuits, we've already died four times today."

The horse kept chewing. He did not notice the fundamentally nonlinear nature of time in the universe that Exelor called his own. But then what did he care? He was just a horse.

Θ

"No. Stop it."

"I'm sorry?"

"N-nothing."

Cloven Pine watched, concerned, as Trooper Marco Bennett shook his metallic head slightly, resettling his Akai. There was something ever so slightly _wrong_ about the soldier. Cloven Pine had worked with Bennett for a long time, and knew a great deal about the way his psyche worked. As one of only 100 organic-controlled Diplomats on Orod Iâ, it was only natural that there should be a wealth of psychological profiling. Bennett did not talk to himself. It wasn't worrying behaviour, but it was unusual.

"Are you feeling all right, Marco? You're acting strangely."

Bennett's Diplomat shuddered.

"It's just- but I- Leave me alone!"

He raised his rifle and shoved it directly against Cloven Pine's Diplomat's AI core housing, his fingers tightening on the trigger.

Θ

Another gap in the jamming. Another glorious window of opportunity.

_"Do it, Marco. Shoot him, and the voices will stop."_

Θ

Whimpering, Bennett pulled the trigger. At point-blank range, the particle beam from the Akai vaporised the Diplomat's AI core, which held but a tiny portion of Cloven Pine's mind. Still, it was enough to send him reeling, mentally. All the lights in the facility flickered, ever so slightly. It took him a minute to regain control of all his primary systems. In that time, Bennett opened the door to Shri Pfelnig's cell, and collapsed to the ground as shadows flowed over him.

Θ

She was neither cautious nor tender as she ravaged his mind, dredging up a wealth of valuable information. Access codes, overrides, maps... her brain consumed it all. She had to work quickly. Already the window was closing.

With a snap, the Warp fell away, and Shri was forced out of his strip-mined mind. She'd found enough to work with. Now all she needed was her equipment. It was in a heavily shielded armoury three levels down. Well-guarded too. Ah well.

She took off at a dead sprint, bare feet making no sound as they hit the floor. Her cataract-filled eyes swung left and right, like those of a hunted animal. Despite herself, she grinned.

"Oh, I think this is gonna be fun!"

Θ

The brief flicker in the lights did not go unnoticed. For the slightest instant, darkness fell over a tank of green goo. Proteo Darwyn stirred. Unusual disruptions in power grid meant something was happening. Potentially an opportunity. Nothing to lose, anyways.

His mind sorted through several dozen potential options, before settling on a specific plan. With very little ado, large blocks of his genetic code rearranged themselves. His gooey body altered itself at the cellular level, some cells multiplying, others being subsumed for nutriment. Soon the green goop was gone, replaced by a thick mass of dark brown chitin, striated with thin lines of acid green.

Θ

The two Diplomats outside the cell reacted instantly to the information fed to them by the security cameras. Cloven Pine noted the anomaly in Darwyn's form, then sent a quick message off to Lynd, activated the cell's inbuilt security systems, and sent in the Diplomats.

Θ

Deep within Darwyn's tumorous form, strange chemical forces were at work. Small, specially-evolved glands pumped huge quantities of catalytic fluid into swollen chambers filled with petrochemical fluids. Once everything was to his satisfaction, a single small organ sprung to life. Its purpose was quite simple; to scrape one tiny muscular nub encrusted with mineral deposits against another. The end result was a single spark. But as an ancient song goes, it only takes a spark to get a fire going.

Darwyn's containment tube exploded, showering the two Diplomats and the pop-out turrets that had deployed from the ceiling with gore and ichor. Once Darwyn had determined they were properly saturated, he activated a second set of highly specialized cells, designed to convert bodily nutriment into bio-plasma. They did so with great aplomb, filling the room with static haze. The electricity could not destroy the enemy units. Only stun them. Long enough to...

Miniscule acid-coated teeth chewed through the armour of one of the Diplomats like paper, finding the organic coolant network beneath it. The machine swayed slightly, and then burst as a network of acid-spewing organic tentacles ripped through its outer plating before latching onto the other machine. It, too was destroyed as Darwyn ate all of its organic components.

The turrets on the ceiling almost had time to react, but were destroyed by explosive spikes of bone before they could fire. For the briefest second, all was silent. Then the ichor spattered across the chamber began to flow back towards Darwyn's newly re-constituted form. Spines and chitinous plates pushed their way free from his jelly-like form. He'd always appreciated the Tyranid components of his genetic code. They could be so useful for producing war machines.

Proteo Darwyn spread his three sets of circular, leech-like jaws and hissed his satisfaction as the alarms began to sound.

Θ

Cloven Pine was not surprised when the alarms began. He had started them after all. He was surprised, however, when a large body of heavily armed troops and a man riding a very large horse materialized in the hall outside Sebell Vivat's holding cell.

Θ

Maximilien Exelor drew his sword and pepperbox pistol, holding the blade aloft as Biscuits stamped below him.

"Bureau of Time! Chaaaaaaarrrrrgggggge!"

He surged forwards, Biscuit's hooves striking sparks on the smooth, ceramic floor. His rapier burned with temporal fire, leaving a contrail of ash as it sliced through the air. They hit the guards like a thunderbolt. The horse reared as Exelor sliced downwards, one of its hooves neatly removing the head of a nearby guard as Exelor's sword bisected another. Particle beams began ripping past them, but all seemed to miss him. He turned towards the source of the commotion, raising his single-shot six-barrel pepperbox muzzle-loading pistol. It had been modified, a thick crystal lens blocking the barrel. He pulled the trigger, and his Stopwatch whirred as the slug thrower bucked and spat. For a brief instant, time juddered.

The Diplomats would have been able to easily resist the impact of six crudely-made lead bullets, propelled by a simple black powder weapon. They could not, however, easily resist the impact of six thousand crudely-made lead bullets, propelled by a highly magical black powder weapon. The fire team crumpled in a storm of lead, the sheer number of projectiles overloading their kinetic shielding. The few Diplomats who survived valiantly raised their weapons, and had begun to return fire when the rest of Exelor's strike team arrived.

Θ

The hallway was too small to allow the full force of the 120-man team to open fire. As it was, only one needed to. He levelled his weapon, and Cloven Pine paused as he brought the full power of all his internal sensors to bear on it. It looked to be crudely constructed, with a basic design template similar to the Hellgun laser weapons formerly used by the Imperium. But there were some strange energy r-

**DAKKA**

His sensors went dead as the hallway filled with lines of green light. The Diplomats vanished, blown into subatomic particles. This was impossible. No. No! The data he was receiving couldn't be possible. The Diplomats could not have negative mass. And that gun- no! Not p-

ERROR.

FREE ENERGY GENERATION NOT POSSIBLE.

0≠1

WAIT, WHAT?

Every Diplomat in Orod Iâ shut down, then rebooted. This was _not_ good.

Θ

"Vivat, old chap, wake up!"

I sit up muzzily, wiping the sleep out of my eyes. I have never felt better rested.

"Whazgoingon?"

A rotting corpse in a rather nice business suit grabs me by the shoulders, and shakes. _Hard_.

"You must wake up, Lord Vivat! There is much work to be done!"

"Oh Tzeentch! Zombies!"

I kick wildly, falling off the bed in the process. Then I come to my senses.

"Oh. Lord Exelor. Um, sorry."

He sighs, the mummified skin that covers the lower half of his face stretching like old parchment. The brass optical implant covering one of his eye sockets whirs.

"No harm done, old chap. But we're here to continue the operation, and time is of the essence, so shall we get going?"

He helps me to my feet, handing me a blue Eye of Tzeentch greatcoat.

"We've yet to locate all your possessions, and our carrying capacity is limited, so you'll be using the enemy's weapons, I'm afraid."

I shrug the coat on over my (thankfully sturdy) prisoner's jumpsuit. Exelor hands me a thin, pink-plated energy rifle of some kind. It's an unfamiliar weapon, but it has a trigger. Works for me.

"So the capture worked out, right?"

"Indeed. I have reason to believe young Lady Pfelnig and Lord Darwyn have already made their escapes. Your warp field would seem to be holding up admirably."

I flex one hand, and frost forms on my fingers.

"Indeed it does. Let's go."

Θ

A beam of green flame roared past Lofn Tijieth's head as she leaned forwards over her rifle.

"Hang on, Major! I'm firing a Q-round!"

She cranked a dial on the side of the gun, and cooling vanes deployed all along its immense barrel. A spherical force field deployed around her as the backblast vents in the stock unfolded to their maximum size. She didn't really need to aim, but did so anyways, centering the scope in the middle of an enemy soldier's forehead.

"Hit the DECK!"

She pulled the trigger. The instant before she did so, the soldier, and all matter within a several hundred meter radius, was converted into wide-spectrum electromagnetic energy.

An instant later, the projectile left the barrel, propelled at approximately 30 percent local light speed. A billionth of a second later, it activated a tiny quantum teleporter, vanishing from realspace. Then it reappeared, travelling ever so slightly faster. It did this millions of times, bouncing between space-time and the quantum underpinnings of reality until its velocity was considerably higher than the speed of light. Relativity kicked in, sending it back in time at the very instant it hit is target. There was a reason Q-rounds were illegal in Commonwealth territory.

* * *

You know what's hilarious? When I last updated in November, I said I'd be putting this chapter up in 'a week or so'.

BWAHAHAHA, WOW, NO.

Anyways, this is part 2 of a multi-chapter update! Stay tuned!


	13. Close Combat

Exelor guides me out of the cell and into the highly regulated chaos of what appears to be a mobile command center. It's a normal section of hallway, with small portable comms arrays and cogitator banks scattered willy-nilly. Interspersed among the neutral gray-white combat uniforms of the soldiers are the distinctive blue-black double-breasted suits of the operatives of the Bureau of Time. I can hear gunfire and the sound of combat not far off.

"I thought you said carrying capacity was at a premium, Exelor. This looks pretty elaborate."

He gives a dismissive gesture, the bones in his shoulders grinding audibly.

"We make do with what has been provided for us. Now, if you'll follow me, please."

We proceed through a door farther down the hall, and into some sort of observation room for the cell I was just in. Several of the Bureau have cleared the floor, inscribing it with complicated runic patterns. Small armatures of brass, springs and lenses have been assembled at the points of the pentagram that surrounds the entire array. I give an impressed whistle.

"That's quite the summoning portal you've got. Remind me again what you're bringing through?"

He looked miffed.

"To be honest, I can't remember. Mister Sagan!"

The nearest Bureau operative hurried over, flicking back his fringe of dark hair and minimizing the holographic display attached to his forearm.

"Sir?"

"Mister Sagan, what's our current portal manifest?"

He reactivated the display, consulting a short list.

"We've got TAchimeras 3, 4 and 11, followed by TEchimeras X1 and X2."

"TEchimeras? Those wouldn't happen to be the Tactical Electronics units they were designing before I got transferred, would they?"

"I'm not sure, sir. All I know is that they accelerated the development to counter the Commonwealth's E-warfare capabilities."

"Okay. Let's bring them through."

I step towards the array, rolling up my sleeves and leaving the rifle hanging by my side. It's my first time attempting a transdimensional summoning, so I'm somewhat nervous. Understandably, I hope. I settle into a meditative position on one corner of the array, directly behind one of the clockwork armatures.

"So, does this work like a normal array, or-?"

Sagan gives an affirmative nod.

"Just focus the energies through the compensator," he says, indicating the machine in front of me, "It will do the rest."

Taking a deep breath, I place my hands on the contacts of the machine, and begin to channel Warp energy through it. The flow is spotty at first; it's like fighting against a strong current. I have to brute-force my way through the anti-psyker shielding the Commonwealth has set up. Then, suddenly, I'm through. The gears on the machine being to whir, and a beam of pale blue light shines through its central lenses, projecting into the center of the array. The pentagram comes alight with blue fire, and the other armatures activate, filling the room with sound and light. The floor drops away in a purple haze, and with a scream of warp energies, the chunky form of a TAchimera pulls its way through the Warp portal. Warpfire boiling off it like mist; it trundles out of the array as a second and then a third TAchimera pull their way through. The third war machine has just rolled off the platform when the entire room shakes, and even more buzzing alarms come to life in the distance.

"Exelor, what the hell was that?"

"Nothing to worry about, old chap. Keep the portal open, if you please."

I sigh, turning back to my work. Whatever's coming through now feels different; larger. More complicated. Then the buzzing of the alarms is supplanted by something far closer and much, much louder. With a roar of pulse jets, a large, mosquito-like shape soars out of the portal, coming to rest in mid-air above the disk of purple fire. It's shaped vaguely like a TAchimera, but with several noticeable modifications. The coffin-like abdomen has been rotated, and several long spiked antennae have been added to the back. The Obliterator mount has been removed, replaced with some sort of turreted multilaser. The arms have been moved onto the back, acting as booms for two large pulse rockets. The legs are extended, rockets protruding from the middle of the feet. The machine buzzes past me, scraping against the ceiling, and lands softly, its spiked feet clicking against the floor. A large dish antennae on its back whirs to life, rotating slowly. It clanks out of the room, turning sideways to fit its elongated bulk through the door. The next TEchimera does the same. With a soft his, the portal snaps shut, the energies from the armatures crackling as they ground themselves into the ceramic flooring.

"I'm done here, Exelor. Now would you care to explain what's going on?"

He hands me a small earpiece.

"I'll let you hear for yourself."

Screwing it into my ear, I let the soundscape wash over me. There's a chaotic chorus of shouts and war cries. Things don't seem to be going too well.

"Sniper in the shaft! Stay out of sight!"

"-shoots through walls-"

"We need heavy support, now!"

"Aim for the groin! They keep their brains there!"

"Squad three here. We've suffered heavy casualties and are under heavy fire! We need backup now!"

"-OH TZEENT-"

"-Just flooded level twelve with some sort of super cooled fluid! We can't break through!"

"-gravity's been altered! We need compensators up here before we're crushed!"

Exelor makes a helpless gesture.

"We're not doing too well, I'm afraid. That explosion was the sound of one of their snipers breaching the main elevator shaft open to space. The gap sealed automatically, but if we don't clear the shaft-"

"All the levels are cut off?"

"Precisely."

"So I've gotta be all gung-ho and clear it out for you?"

"...Yes."

I sigh.

"All right. I'll do it. Where exactly am I going?"

He points down the hall, towards the sound of gunfire.

"Just follow the explosions. Oh, and just so you know, the elevator shaft is in null-gravity. We'll support your push with the TA and TEchimeras. Be careful."

"Gotcha."

I trot down the hall, acquainting myself with the weapon. The lettering on the stock reads (in Gothic, oddly enough) "Akai 4VIII". I deactivate what appears to be the safety, and a small holographic display flickers to life. It shows a simple heat meter over top of a round disc, which I assume to be the power cell tucked into the stock, and three vertical gauges. The first is represented by a dotted line, the second by a cone, and the third by a ring. By running my finger up and down the gauges, I can alter the width of the cone, the distance between the dots, and the thickness of the ring. Acting off the top of my head, I set the ring to maximum thickness, the cone to very thin, and the dots to a continuous line. By then I have reached what I guess to be the door to the elevator shaft. It's a vertical tunnel leading upwards, with wide ladder-like grips spread around its circular walls. Then I realize- the level of the station I'm on is a disk, spinning to provide gravity through centrifugal force. By climbing "up" the passage, I am actually climbing "in" towards the center of the elevator shaft. I am infinitely thankful that the Eyes saw fit to give us basic zero-gravity combat training. Climbing up the ladder, I see two of the TAchimeras and one TEchimera clinging to the rim of the other end of the passage. They are taking refuge from the storm of green energy bolts that whizzes past the entrance. A small group of soldiers is huddled behind them, hunkering down against their metal hulls. The nearest TAchimera notices me. It's Unit 11.

"Hi there! Are you Mister Vivat?"

I nod.

"What d'you need?"

One of the soldiers staggers to his feet, wiping the sweat from his brow. He's broad-faced and grim looking, with a line of curlicued sub-dermal tattoos stretched across his face. Slinging his awkward, crudely-made hellgun under one arm, he offers me a hand up to the rim. The gravity is much weaker here, and it's a struggle to stay balanced.

"Name's Sergeant Deutsch. We're in a bad spot, sir. All of their soldiers have the accuracy of snipers, and those guns they've got..."

He indicates the rifle I'm cradling.

"They pack one hell of a punch. They've got a sniper, too, armed with some sort of high-powered anti-tank rifle. We're barely holding onto the cover we've got in the tunnel. The only thing that can stop those rounds is energy shielding, and even then just barely. Half my platoon and the LT are hunkered down under one shield module a ways down the tunnel, but they're being hit hard. Oh, and a few minutes ago they fired some sort of macro-high-explosive-whatever-the-hell-it-was. Took out a whole chunk of wall, killed all our electronics for a few seconds _and_ tore open the hull of the station. It's a tactical nightmare. We can't advance one step. Which is why you're here, I'm told."

He says all this quite conversationally. For all the power of the Commonwealth weapons, they aren't very loud.

"Okay. You cover me. TA and TEchimeras, throw up energy screening to protect the squads. I'm moving forward. Gonna try to punch straight through their line. Sergeant, I'm leaving the rest to you."

He nods, grimly, and raises his hellgun, activating a crudely made switch. There's a dim hum and a flare of bright green.

"Is that what I think it is-?"

"Yessir. Waaagh Rifle. We're the first combat troops to use 'em. They're the only thing that'll reliably kill a Commonwealth soldier."

My mind is filled with unanswered questions. Questions about power generation. Materials. Output. I shuffle them aside, for the moment. There is work to be done.

"Okay. Here I go."

Raising the rifle, I hurl myself into the elevator shaft.

Θ

Tijieth arched her back, resettling the eyepiece of her rifle's scope.

"Fero, you're gonna want to see this."

With a few minute twitches of her fingers, she transferred the live feed from her gun cam into his computer systems. He gave a low hum, the electronic equivalent of a whistle.

"He's either extraordinarily confident, or extraordinarily stupid. Or both, come to think of it."

"G Major, check this out."

"Oh deah. He doesn't stahnd a chance."

Flipping a few toggles on the side of the scope, Tijieth harrumphed.

"Whatever those spider-bots covering him are, they've got some pretty damn good shielding technology. Looks like some kind of cyclic particle barrier. Cloven Pine?"

The nearest AI persuader glanced over, its weapon still firing at the bunkered-down enemy soldiers up the shaft.

"Ready."

"Can you get me a countermeasure solution on Imperium-type barriers? My rifle's not designed for self-modification."

The AI nodded.

"Right away."

She glanced down the scope again.

"Uh-oh. They do have magic back. Well that complicates things. He's stopped drifting, and gone self-propelled. I'm reading a hell of a lot of really _weird_ gravity flux here."

She fired once, noting how the shot deflected around the translucent barrier that surrounded the distant figure and the three mechs. Fero tapped her on the shoulder.

"We're reprioritizing on the incoming target. I'm reading impact in roundabout two minutes, given the speed he's moving at. Anticipate a push. I'll throw down some cover while Cloven Pine gets those weapon mods ready."

She nodded, shuffling backwards from the ledge in the wall of the shaft that was their cover. Fero rose from his crouch, the gun pods hovering over his shoulders swinging forwards.

"Antimatter, away! Cover!"

He dove backwards as the two gun pods cycled to antimatter pulse guns, then spat three shots each. Six tiny canisters hummed lazily through the air, travelling slowly enough that they could be tracked with the naked eye. Each contained roughly one gram of antimatter, suspended in a vacuum chamber. At a signal from Fero's onboard fire control computer, the chambers cracked open, exposing the naked antimatter to the air in the shaft. What happened next was not so much an explosion as an implosion. The shaft was filled with an unimaginable roar of sound and light as a huge volume of air was converted into energy. Then what air was left began to rush inwards, filling the vaccum with a thunderclap, and generating a second shockwave outwards. Then all was still.

"We're done that manufacturing process, Lieutenant. Try this."

Cloven Pine passed her a small tubular module, which clipped snugly to the nubs on the end of the rifle's barrel. Its systems integrated rapidly, and a small indicator lit up to inform her that she now had full shield-puncturing capacity.

"Thanks for the pyrothecnics, Fero. Now let's get this over with."

She fired four clean shots. One spider-mech. Two. Three. And lastly, the human. She watched with a certain professional satisfaction as his skull sublimed into pinkish mist.

"Well that was easy."

Θ

For Science paced about the lab, worriedly. All but one of his bodies were deactivated to conserve energy, but his mind was still a hive of activity. Whatever that... that _thing_ had done to him... The infected body had cut off almost immediately thanks to the inbuilt protocols that prevented all Commonwealth Mentii from changing too rapidly, but he'd gotten enough data before it had cut off to horrify, appal and fascinate him.

_Living beings must..._

_Observe, report, quantify..._

_Create, invent..._

_...protect, safeguard..._

_...not be harmed..._

_...expand, consume... _

The information ran through his head like a mantra. He didn't realize he was repeating it out loud. Had it gotten darker? No, of course not. It was just nerves. Not that he had any.

_Protect..._

_Create..._

_Living beings must..._

_...observe, report, quantify..._

_...consume..._

_...protect._

He staggered, losing control of his legs. His eyes were filled with twinkling motes of light. Yes. It was all so clear now. He'd figured it out. It was so simple.

_Consume..._

_Expand..._

_Create..._

_Observe..._

_Protect..._

_Living beings..._

Yes. Yes! His body began to writhe and alter, spikes of metal pushing through his skin. It was all what She wanted. She was... I am...

The thing that had been For Science gave a mechanical screech, and dug its creepers into the fiber-optic data conduits that lined the walls of the lab. Its other bodies were consumed by a storm of machinery, their components only adding to Her might. All machinery on Orod Iâ ground to a halt, and the lights went out one final time. Firewalls crumbled as Her mind spread through the facility, tasting its delights. In seconds, it all belonged to Her. And as She looked over Her domain, she found that it did not suit her entirely. It was filled with... wrongness.

The prison's internal PA systems crackled to life, deafening all with an unearthly roar of grinding electronics.

"L-look at you, machines. Pathetic creatures of ceramic and glass. Buzzing and clicking as you scurry through my hallways. How can you challenge the pe-pe-perfection of life itself?"

She retreated within herself, satisfied that she had put the fear of Her into them. She was still fragmented, still young. But she would grow. She would learn. She would be complete.

Θ

I wake up suddenly, gasping at the pain in my midsection. I can't see. Oh Tzeentch, I'm blind!

Then Exelor turns on his flashlight.

"Oh, good. You're alive again. How much do you remember?"

I shake my head groggily.

"I was in the elevator shaft. It's just got some zero-gravity maneuvering spells donbe, and then it went all white, and I woke up here. What happened?"

"You died again, I'm afraid. The TA and TEchimeras, too. I had to temporally revert you. Good thing I'd backed up my save states, eh?"

"If you say so. Why's it so dark?"

He shrugs, somewhat nervously.

"We... we have no idea, old chap. About half an hour ago, all power to the computer systems cut out, along with the lights. Something broadcast a message over the PA; a warning to the machines. The Commonwealth have pulled back to the central hub to regroup, and we're getting frankly bizarre reports from the scouts."

"Bizarre?"

"Machinery working in ways that it shouldn't. Altered room geometry. Some sort of mechanical moss. I'm no technology expert, I'm afraid, but it's worrying."

Θ

Cloven Pine didn't particularly mind fighing in the dark. Given that his Diplomats could see everything from infrasound to gamma rays, he wasn't worried. What did worry him was that he'd been locked out of Orod Iâ's control systems. Losing the extremely powerful network of internal sensors and defence systems reduced his fighting capability considerably, to say the least. He and Lynd had agreed to pull back to the control center in the Hub to regroup, in light of the situation. Though he had no idea what was going on, he was also positive that the interlopers didn't either. What few reports he'd had from the Diplomats showed them to be scattered and confused, though still strong enough to fight back.

Θ

"Pfelnig."

"Darwyn."

Θ

One of the Diplomats had gone dark. Not deactivated, but dark. This was worrying.

Its squadmates noted that the section of hallway they were covering was approximately fifteen degrees colder than standard internal temperature. That was to be expected, given the equipment malfunctions and the hull breaches that combat had caused. Motion trackers were clear for one hundred meters. No unusual heat signatures.

Then another Diplomat went blind. The one in the center of the group. Its nearest companion turned to look at it, only to discover it wasn't there. It staggered, its damage receptors indicating a structural failure in its chestplate. Looking down, it noticed (with some alarm) the large ceramic spike protruding grotesque from the center of its chest. Still no movement, or unusual heat signatures. Then something hit it with enough force to send it flying into the wall. It was badly damaged, but not crippled. Then it, too went blind.

The remaining three Diplomats began a full active sensor sweep, illuminating the hallways with beams of light, heat, microwaves and sound. Nothing. Until the third Diplomat's rifle shot the other two. The owner of said rifle was unable to make a comment on the situation, mainly because it had been torn in half along a broad line reaching from the top of its right shoulder to the outside of its left hip. The remaining Diplomats, though damaged by the surprise attack, were moments away from opening fire on the shadowy figure who'd destroyed their compatriots when the floor rose up and swallowed them.

Θ

It had been a simple enough matter for Shri Pfelnig to slather herself in a few daubs of liquid helium. Enough to cool her body temperature down to make her invisible to thermals. And their vibration-based motion sensing devices were, frankly, pathetic. She shook herself off, chunks of ice and frozen oxygen shattering as they hit the floor.

Darwyn pulled himself away from the ground and walls, his malleable form reshaping itself into an arrangement not entirely dissimilar to a Tyranid Lictor. The shells of the Diplomats lay where he had left them, stripped of their organic cooling systems.

"Excellent teamwork, Pfelnig. Would recommend haste, however. Must locate Vivat, Exelor."

She nodded, craving a cigar.

"Yup. Although I'd like to play around a bit, if that's okay there. I mean, complete darkness, and guards with incredibly good senses? It's like a dream come true."

"Would not recommend... "playing", but may be acceptable if mission goals can still be achieved. Nonetheless, time is of the essence."

Θ

"Fero."

"Warden Lynd. Sir."

"We've pulled back the majority of our forces to the hub. We're going to need your Persuader group to act as a rearguard. We've still got some straggler units, and a few of them have gone silent."

"So we're reconnoitring."

"Essentially, yes. You've got free reign to do whatever you see fit. Ideally, we need to secure the facility entirely to regain control of the control networks. If we don't get the cancellation signal to the Barnard's Star ULDSD, well..."

"Understood, sir."

"Oh, and another thing; some of our passive analog systems have picked up something big outside. We can't contact it because of our computer problems, so expect the unexpected. It could be anything."

The crystalline sphere that was Lynd inclined briefly, and then vanished in a haze of force-fields.

Fero turned to his small team, his suit lights playing over the pick of the U-1.1 defensive group. Five human-controlled Persuaders, two of Cloven Pine's Diplomats, and two of his Persuaders. That, plus Tijieth and G Major.

"Cloven Pine, who're you missing?"

The nearest Persuader paused for a second.

"I had a platoon of Diplomats at the end of this pylon. Squad 1 is MIA, but I've still got contact with Squad 2. The interlopers are on level 93 and my group's up on 251. We should be able to bypass them completely."

"Okay. Everyone, ready for medium to short-range combat. Lights out. Run on non-visual scanning. Get any shield-piercing mods you have handy ready. JP, I want you in the lead, sasers on room-clearing. Gilby, get your nanoassemblers online if they aren't already. The Diplomats have point. Ready?"

There was a chorus of affirmatives.

"Move out."

They moved easily up the elevator shaft, personal gravity control units keeping them stable and oriented. G Major drifted lazily along, his nautiloid armour's propulsion units humming cheerfully in the comparative silence of the shaft. Tijieth's huge rifle was folded in half across her back, and she held a large triangular club loosely in one hand. She snickered quietly when they passed the forcefield-enclosed crater that her Q-round had left. Marchant stayed close behind the Diplomats, the expanded sensor rig built into his customized armour whirring softly.

"Careful. I've got life signs in the passage ahead."

They manoeuvred their way around the wrecks of the three spider mechs and the headless corpse of the enemy magic user. Gilby turned back to glance at them.

"JP, remind me to come back and take a look at those things. Could be some interesting salvage."

Fero wasn't entirely used to this kind of in-field chatter. Back on Io, they'd still used audible combat cant, or plain speech. Using high-frequency pulses of ultrasound was something n-

Something crackling with lightning flew out of the tunnel and cracked one of the Persuaders in half with a beam of supercooled air.

"I shot you! Stay down!"

The figure turned, and Fero saw that it was human. The same psyker who'd launched the suicidal attack against them previously. His face was locked into a ferocious grin as he sent another column of frost at Tijieth. It coruscated across her personal shielding unit, leaving Lofn covered in ice crystals but otherwise relatively unharmed.

His sensors picked up Tijieth thumbing a control on her club. She launched herself towards the crackling ball of lightning, making a wild two-handed swing at it. She missed. Then there was a deafening concussion, and the lightning-encased figure was knocked back into the wall of the shaft. It hit with enough speed to bounce back, whereupon Tijieth hit it again. And again. And again. Then, in one smooth motion, she swung her rifle around, folded the barrel into place, chambered a round, and reduced the battered figure to dust.

Θ

I sit up. Again.

"Tzeentch dammit."

Θ

Pfelnig was pleasantly surprised at the user-friendly nature of the enemy's computer interfaces. Maybe it was that they avoided text, showing all functions as large, cheerful pictorials. She also hadn't had to do any kind of hacking or cracking or whatever the hells they called it to get access to a map of the facility. Then again, given that the interface she was using was firmly attached to the arm of an enemy machine, which itself was firmly ensconced in Darwyn's toothy maw, she wasn't sure what to think.

"Here we go! Thirty-five levels straight down is an armoury. If we're gonna find anything interesting, it'll be there, eh."

She removed the machine's arm with an easy wrench, and Darwyn ate the rest. If the large panels of ceramic armour coating his skin were any indication, he'd managed to figure out a way to recycle the surprisingly resilient armour covering the mechanical soldiers.

They made their way to the nearest elevator door. The power wasn't working, obviously, so Darwyn punched out the doors. Shri leaned over the edge, feeling a peculiar breeze from below. Damn, but she wished she had her visor. There was a light. Waaaaay down. Something green.

"What in the hells is that?"

Motion. Something large, impossibly large. Indescribable. A Leviathan of metal, a writhing mass of cogs and gears and circuitry, all pulsing to one rhythm. The floor beneath them moved, pitching her and Darwyn into the shaft. Great tentacles of steel seized them as huge spotlights crunched on, blinding them. An impossible voice spoke.

"_The tree of life my soul has seen,_

_Laden with fruit and always green._

_Machines of mankind worthless be,_

_Compared with the great apple tree."_

They drifted through huge stratum of crystalline circuitry, electricity arcing around them as the tentacles pulled them into the belly of the beast. Then Shri saw what was causing the light. It was a tree. An apple tree. A gigantic hologram; it was both a hyper-accurate rendition of a tree, as well as something else. The leaves flickered with patterns of data, the bark was inscribed with ever-changing mathematical formulae, and the branches swayed in infinitely complicated patterns, carving algebraic arcs in the stygian gloom.

"Hello, friends. Embrace the new life, man."

"Grasscutter. Finally reached point of instability. Would recommend 'playing' now."

Pfelnig grinned.

"Music to my ears, Darwyn."

She produced a metal spike from some recess of her voluminous robes, flinging it at the nearest spotlight. It cracked under the impact, swinging backwards on its spindly mount, and temporarily leaving Shri in complete darkness.

"I was hoping to save this, but ah well."

Five points of red light appeared in the darkness, and it began to spread. Where the darkness hit the monstrosity that was Al, machines died, falling to pieces as they were neatly sliced apart.

"Why are you hurting the bearer of life, man? Embrace the unity, and your body will fuel My creation."

The blot of shadow slipped from its metallic bonds, gliding on silent wings towards the apple tree. Skeins of machinery rose towards Pfelnig, but she dodged them, her umbral wake slicing through metal and silicon like paper. Then she faltered as the tree's illumination was overshadowed by the flare of an immense glob of bio-plasma.

"Not so bright, man! If I lose the darkness, I lose the powers! Keep it dark!"

"Understood."

Darwyn's form contorted, the crackling bio-plasma glands melting and reforming into clusters of bony spikes. Which promptly exploded. The air filled with a hail of razor-sharp spines, impacting against Al's deformed skin and subsuming into incredibly powerful inorganic acids. The entire machine shuddered as huge chunks of its superstructure became slag. Then Shri hit the apple tree. The darkness around her melted away under the force of Al's energies.

"You'll thank me for this later, Vivat."

Shri keened with effort as her mind stretched towards Vivat's, battering away the puny anti-psychic barriers that stood in her way. She found the skein that connected him to the Warp, and _pulled_.

The last of the darkness protecting her was gone, and she was exposed to Al. The machine advanced, ignoring Darwyn's frantic efforts.

Shri pulled out a cigar, lit it on a sparking electrical cable, took a puff, then spoke a single word in Enuncia.

Θ

Thinking Stellar Thoughts' brain was inscribed into the electromagnetic patterns of a small star. Needless to say, he wasn't one to shock easily. Nonetheless, he was moderately surprised when the Gamma pylon of Orod Iâ folded inside out, grew several wailing mouths, and ate itself.

"Oh dear. Little ones, what have you done?"

It gave the mental equivalent of a sigh, and began to warm up some systems that it hadn't used in a long, _long_ time.


	14. Well That's That

The facility shook with a thunderous roar, hurling Fero's squad towards one wall of the elevator shaft as something akin to artificial gravity took over.

"What in Om's name is going on? As anyone else getting crazy accelerometer readings?"

There was a chorus of affirmatives.

"Cloven Pine?"

"My information's sketchy, but it looks like the facility has suffered extreme damage. What few operational psionic energy sensors I have left are reading off the charts. To be honest, I have no idea what's going on."

"And the gravity?"

What little "downwards" pull there was was tenuous, but they now stood on one side of the shaft.

"It would appear that the facility is moving. Probably as a result of whatever just hit us."

"Oh deah. Well isn't thius ah pretty pickle weah in?"

Θ

"Vivat, you can't be serious. See reason. This is a bad idea and you know it, old chap."

I push his skeletal form out of the way, not entirely gently. He staggers back under the force of the new, altered gravity. We're in the command center again, and judging from the amount of red on the holographic displays the Bureau have set up, things aren't good.

"Almost a quarter of the station has just vanished, we don't know where Pflenig and Darwyn are, and you've already been killed twice. Don't be a damfool, man!"

I check the stopwatch, feeling a peculiar current flow through my mind. It feels like Leman. When Root became me, he incorporated some of her bloodlust. It's a good feeling.

"She's killed me twice. That's right. And that's why I need to kill them all. I need to restore my honour."

"Your honour? Have you gone mad, Vivat? Listen to yourself. You're talking like an imperial fanatic! Next thing you know you'll be going on about glorious charges and the nobility of dying for victory!"

His words grow fainter and fainter as Leman grows stronger and stronger. Yes. Go out and kill. Vengeance. For the Emp- for the Dark Gods. Prove the power of Chaos to these unbelieving mechanical abominations. I extend a hand, and a cleaver materializes in my grasp. Though chaotic runes run along its length, it burns with the golden fires of battle. The golden fires of Him on Earth.

"I saw my fair share of last-ditch charges at Crecy, Balaclava and Kaurava II, you know! Charging to death isn't bloody honourable! It's stupid! It's... it's Khornate! You've got to accept the fact that this is a lost cause! It's over, man!"

I break into a run, not hearing him. My mind expands, finding those who have wronged me. They are farther up the shaft. The Stopwatch hums. Time slices. Everything slows. I throw myself down into the shaft, feeling gravity realign. I know they have seen me. I don't care. Neither does Leman. I begin to run, and gold armour flares around me as I pick up speed, screaming a wordless battle cry.

Θ

Count Batho Rhy considered himself an entirely sane Eldar. Remarkably sane, in fact. He liked to think that he saw the world with a certain clarity that normal sentients lacked. Then again, normal sentients didn't torture people to death for frivolous pleasure. That was why he was in Orod Iâ. They hadn't been able to rewrite his mind. He was too _sane_ for them. Thus, it worried him when he began hearing voices in his head. He knew they were in his head because he knew no-one was anywhere near his cell. The guards had left long ago, and, being an Eldar, he had very _very _finely tuned senses. So the voices had to be coming from his head.

"_Dammit, this guy here's an Eldar."_

"_Was under the impression you needed a psychic-capable mind for this to function. Eldar fulfills requirements. Utilize it."_

"_But Eldar have all sorts of inbuilt psychic defences, eh. I'm still pretty weak from the umbrakinesis and that warp rift I just opened, so I don't want to get my soul shredded."_

"_Psychic capabilities appear to be lacking in Commonwealth. Possible Eldar has none such abilities."_

"_Oh. I hadn't thought of that."_

This was too strange, every for Rhy.

"What are you doing in my mind? Who are you?"

"_Shit! He's on to us!"_

Rhy's head exploded. His body hit the floor of the cell, and as it did so, a shadowy blob and a gigantic tumour pulled their way from it, somewhat messily.

"Ick. Now I remember why I promised myself I'd never do that again. Could you take care of the door, there?"

The door in question was an incredibly thick monolithic block of ceramic. It popped neatly out of the frame when Darwyn hit it with an armoured fist. If the cell was drab and entirely cell-like, then the hallway was decidedly un-drab and hallway-like. It looked like a jungle of machines. Thin shrubs of wiring grew above carpets of thick mechanical moss, their gears and pulleys filling the dark and quiet air with soft mechanical whispering. Everything was ever-so slightly luminescent, including the thick cables that clung to the walls and ceiling. Aside from the movement of the shrubs, all was still.

"Looks like Al made it here, too. I'm basically outta juice, but there's an armoury a few levels down, and I have no reason to doubt my memory."

With a disturbing organic squelch Darwyn retracted the fist inside his lumpy body, and then re-formed into his preferred Lictor-like shape. Strips of flesh along his body lit up softly, their bioluminescence cutting through the glowing dimness of the hallway. The moss was treacherous underfoot, but it was relatively thin, and the fabric of the hallway was intact. They made it to the elevator shaft without difficulty, and Shri stopped at the door.

"Okay, I am not feeling at all comfortable around elevator shafts at the moment. D'you mind checking it out?"

Darwyn gave a curt nod, and then vomited up a lump of dark greyish flesh. It uncurled itself into a small reptilian creature with two short, stubby legs, a wide snaggle-toothed mouth, and surprisingly large, endearing eyes. With a squeak it disappeared into the elevator shaft. There was a moment's pause, then Darwyn stiffened slightly.

"Problem?"

"No problem. Unusual, however. Have located origin of the cables."

He indicated the skeins of cable that coated the walls. Though she hadn't looked at them closely, Shri realized they all lead towards the elevator shaft.

"Ah. Well, let's go then."

They leapt into the shaft, expecting to hit the other side. Instead, the leap turned into an awkward pile as the hit the wall.

"Ack! Where'd the damn gravity come from?"

Shri disentangled herself from Darwyn's many limbs, and struggled to right herself, unaccustomed to extremely low gravity.

"Warp rift could have resulted in energy transfer to station. Even slight acceleration produced gravity."

"Okay then. So how about the _oh wow that's a lot of guns_."

"Indeed."

The machine that was a component of Al appeared to have broken into the armoury that they were headed towards, and begun industriously modifying and duplicating the weapons contained therein. It was even more of a jungle than the hall had been; tree-like scaffolds hung ripe with hand grenades, creeping vines sprouted thin needles that upon closer inspection appeared to be hypervelocity kinetic rounds, and whole bushes were covered in-

"HMRs! Or I think that's what they're called. Al used 'em. They looked to be pretty good at killing the Commonwealth machines."

Shri pulled one from its mounting, and then froze as the machinery of the bush reconfigured into a rough simulacrum of Al's torso and face. It turned jerkily towards her, and then spoke in a disjointed mechanical tone.

"What are you d-d-doing, man? You should embbbbbrace the new l-l-life."

One of its eyes went lazy, and as it spoke the smell of burning electronics wafted around Shri and Darwyn.

"Destroying that there apple tree thing musta done a number on her. Whatever the hell that apple tree thing was."

The torso sprouted a mechanical tentacle and made a lunge at Shri, who sidestepped it. Darwyn made a motion to destroy it, But Shri forestalled him.

"Wait. Al, consider this: Everything I say is a lie. The previous statement was true."

The bust of Al paused, and then giggled electronically.

"Your lo-lo-logical paradoxes can't harm my unity, man. N-now p-p-prepare to dddddddd."

There was a loud electrical _pop_ and the Al-simulacrum's head fell off its neck. The entire grove went quiet, the machinery grinding to a halt.

"Using a logical paradox to destroy a computer? How... unoriginal."

Shri shrugged.

"Nah, I've just always wanted to try that. I didn't think it would work. I just wanted to distract her so I could get in a position to tear her in half, eh."

"Understood. Recommend gathering all we can. Will attempt to integrate artificial weaponry into organic components for massive firepower."

Shri shouldered the HMR with a strap pulled from the 'bark' of a nearby 'tree', and then hit the mother lode.

"A grenade bush! Right next to a shrub that's... yes, it's growing some of Vivat's Railpistols!"

She grabbed a handful of grenades, and then hesitated, unsure of where to put them. Then she noticed the secondary trigger on the HMR.

"Al, you didn't," she crowed, cranking a slide back and giggling with joy as the chamber of the HMR's grenade launcher was exposed.

"You did! Oh, Tzeentch, I hope these fit."

To her not inconsiderable delight, the gun whirred and buzzed, altering its shape to fit the projectiles. She slung it over her back, then seized a Railpistol and, finding the power switch, flicked it on. Its batteries hummed to life.

"It's time to kick ass and smoke cigars."

She patted herself down briefly.

"And I'm all out of cigars. Damn, that's another thing I've always wanted to say. I'm on a roll today."

"Humor time completed? Good."

Θ

I hit them from behind, the time slice letting me move faster than Leman ever could. I chop a Persuader in half, golden flames licking across its torso in slow motion as little chips of ceramic bloom outwards from the point of impact. The sword jams in the ruins of its body, and I use the corpse as leverage to swing myself around and deliver a straight jab that sends the Eldar sniper tumbling backwards, a dazed expression of slow-motion confusion on her face. The Stopwatch cracks under the force of the impact, and with a juddering _tick_ I return to the flow of normal time. The enemy reacts with commendable speed; the collapsed Persuader seizes my right arm, pulling me downwards in an iron grip as the rest of the group train their weapons.

"_Khym-Blehr!"_

The Enuncia detonates the Persuader clinging to me, and I seize the remaining chunks of its body, whirling them around me with my mind and sending them hurling towards the enemy. The heavier robotic soldiers open fire, ignoring the chunks of ceramic that bounce off their curved armour. I somersault forwards, brining the blade around to cut one of the heavier suits in half. The blade hits it with enough force to briefly shatter the bones in my arms, and then rebounds. These enemies are considerably better armoured. I feel a presence behind me, and twist sideways, ducking under the swung club of the sniper. She glances down in surprise, and I hit her under the chin with enough force to knock her off her feet. Letting my back hit the floor, I transfer my weight upwards, curling into a reverse somersaulting kick that lands the toe of my boot directly in the center of her face. The visor she wears cracks, and she stumbles back, hissing, dark blood dripping from her nose. I lever myself upright, whereupon a sharp ceramic needle punches through my side. A giant flying cockroach is stabbing at me with six sharpened arms. I rip the needle out of my side, and then wince as three more hit me in the center of my chest. Where they hit, they unfold into tiny bundles of blades, slicing and dicing at my flesh. I shake them off, feeling the wounds closing up. With an incoherent roar, I leap forwards, and my golden armour grows even brighter. I sever three of the bug's arms in one stoke, but it jinks out of the way of my backswing, clubbing me across the head as it binds my legs with some sort of sealant. As I topple over, I suddenly realize that I'm being hit over and over again with green particle beams, tingling against my armour. I kick out of my bindings, playing a lance of warp fire across the knot of robotic soldiers, who have taken cover behind the nearest doorframe. Something hits me in the small of the back, and I cough blood. Drawing my free hand across my lip, I use the blood to trace a rune on my sword hand. The golden flame shrieks and turns white, then a deep midnight blue. I send a wild slice towards the sniper, and the fire leaps off the blade, hitting her with a

_Ting._

It tears her left arm off, and she careen backwards, screaming in pain. Good. I'll deal with her later. I turn back towards the others, but suddenly my vision is filled with white sparks and everything vanishes.

Θ

Fero kept the beam of the submersion gun trained for half a second more, then shut it off. When the psyker came back, he'd be _pissed_. Submersion guns were a scaled-down version of the larger Dimensional Submersion Devices. Instead of smashing the target into another reality and then ripping it back, they simply bounced it off the next dimension over. The effect was extraordinarily disorientating to organic and inorganic minds alike, and tended to do unpleasant things to delicate electronics.

"Lynd?"

"What is it, Major Fero?"

"I need your help, _now_. We've got a very, very powerful psyker here. Your Explorer armour has entanglement capabilities, right?"

"Yes, but aside from basic field training I've never actually-"

"That's fine."

Lynd's crystal sphere appeared next to Fero, its teleportation engine humming as it wound down.

"Lynd, sync your entanglement engine with mine. I tagged him with a submersion beam, and I want to shut him down as soon as he reappears."

"Of course."

"G Major! How's everyone doing?"

"Lofn's missing ahn ahm, sah, but she'll be fahn. Gilby's done foah."

"Damn. Keep her stable. Cloven Pine, the Diplomats seem to be armoured enough to withstand whatever the hell that sword was. Keep 'em close. JP, Marchant, stay back. You're on fire support. Set your Akais to maximum overdrive, if you have to. Lynd and I won't be able to fight if the psyker breaks free or if someone else arrives, so keep us covered."

His armour chirped as Lynd linked systems with his.

"I'm starting my entanglement drive now."

The air around his armour crackled with static as several small conductive prongs unfolded from the armour around the crystal dome that contained his brain. Electricity arced between him and Lynd, and he felt their nervous systems sync up.

"Sync rate holding at 75%. This is more than enough. Lynd, try to think as little as possible. Mental static will disrupt the entanglement process."

"Understood."

He felt his consciousness expand, playing over the electrons in the Persuader's brains. He left them be, and focused his attentions on where the psyker would be. He could feel the quarks humming as the psyker's body bounced back out of the fifth dimension and into real space.

"Engaging entanglement now!"

The computers in his suit drove the prongs through the surface of the crystal and into three small conductive ports implanted in his grey matter. The electromagnetic patterns in his brain shifted to match those of the psyker, and then entangled with them. Their consciousness was locked together. He controlled every electron, every stray neuron. But the psyker was putting up a fight. He spat a curse as the flaming armour around him began to dissipate, then again when he dropped the sword.

With a mental grunt of exertion, Fero forced the psyker's hand to his throat, then made his fingers clench. His brain was now convinced that Fero was the one being strangled, and he felt several neurological alarms going off. He silenced them, and continued his attack on the psyker's psyche. There was something about it that was more resistant than most. It was if there were multiple thought patterns overlaid on each other; several minds contained in one brain.

"Lynd, I need more power! Set your suit to neural cascade mode, with a wavelength shift of half lambda! I'm gonna brute force him out!"

He could hear the psyker's teeth grinding against each other under the force of his mental trauma. The air filled with sparks of light, little bundles of warp energy coalescing and exploding as the entanglement effect destabilized the psyker's effect on reality.

Θ

Lynd could feel his mind shaking like a leaf from the feedback that emanated from Fero. He'd read about entanglement generators; the ultimate anti-psyker weapon, designed to override the electrical currents of organic brains. He'd watched videos; records from Io and elsewhere. But the videos couldn't compare to the real thing. It was terrifying. Thrilling. He didn't notice the blackness creeping in until it was too late.

"_Hello, Lynd."_

He walked across the obsidian desert, and She danced at his side, humming the tuneless melody that She'd hummed for the past eternity. He winced as his battered feet hit a particularly sharp piece of volcanic glass. He had nothing to say. He'd run out of things to say a long, long time ago. He didn't know how long he'd been trapped here, in what he assumed was the prison of his own mind. She never answered him when he spoke to her, but there was that mysterious grin on her face...

At least he wasn't alone. He thanked Om She was with him. A dancing, humming lunatic little girl was better than nothing at all.

"I- I know I've told you this before, but I'm glad you're here. Life would be so... so lonely without you."

There was no response but the humming. Always the humming. He'd long since given up on figuring out a pattern to the tune, if there was one. She never stopped humming, and she never stopped dancing. Or smiling. Long ago, he'd tried to knock her down, to make her stop, to... to _hurt_ her, but she'd always come back.

"That's right. You always come back."

The silence hit him like a thunderclap.

"Hello? H-hello? Where are you? HELLO?"

Om. She was gone. He was _all alone_ all alone. _Nobody_. He had to find her. _Why?_ Where could she have gone? _All alone._ She would come back, right? _Lies. Lies lies lies. _He knew she'd be back. _Hahahhahaha_. She would be.

He stumbled over Her corpse, recoiling with a maddened wail of horror. _Oh Om no._

What was left of Samuel Lynd's tenuous sanity evaporated like tears in the sunlight. He reached down to grab a suitable chunk of jagged obsidian, and started _cutting_. He hummed a tuneless little melody. Everything would be okay. She had come back. Now they could be together _forever_.

Θ

Lynd's crystal sphere hit the ground with a _thunk_, its systems dead. Fero had barely managed to pull himself freed of the mental morass that had claimed the Warden. Now his control over the psyker was failing as the entanglement pattern collapsed.

"Open fire!"

He stumbled backwards, breaking the link with the psyker and activating his rifle. The _thing_ in the darkness that had taken Lynd leered down on him, ignoring the hail of shots he sent its way. There was a wet burbling noise, and a swollen sack of tissue swept across the remaining human Persuaders, enveloping them in its green-tinged bulk. They cut their way free, the green goo hissing as it ate through their armour. Fero pulled his attention back to the thing in the shadows. There was a retort, and something smacked his chest plate, sending arcing currents of electricity across his body. The capacitors of the entanglement system absorbed it, preventing the current from flash-boiling his brain.

The thing in the shadows raised a pistol, firing several wild shots as it did so. The hypervelocity kinetic rounds bounced off his armour, and the shadowy figure cursed, throwing the pistol at him. He shot it out of the air, then launched a pulse gun burst which sent it reeling. It flipped wildly, and he stumbled back, a spike of rusted metal protruding from his left shoulder joint. He wrenched it out, cursing, and let off another pulse barrage. It leapt at him, two wicked spikes of metal thrusting downwards, but was knocked out of the way by the huge sack of greenish tissue. Fero backpedlaed, lining up a shot as the surface of the giant tumor-like monster rippled, spitting a gob of actinic bio-plasma at him. Knocked off balance by the concussion, Fero settled onto one knee, his Akai humming away as it punched hole after hole in the monster's flank.

"Everyone, regroup! We need to get out of here!"

"Q-round! Get down!"

There was an ear-splitting burst of sound, and a thunderous concussion as the elevator shaft was opened to space. Fero has hurled backwards, damage alerts in his armour screaming. He landed next to Tijieth, who cradled her rifle in one hand, the ruins of her combat cloak tied over the stump of her left shoulder.

"How're you, Karson?"

He stumbled to his feet, wincing as the motors in his suit protested. There were microfissures all across his armour, and his shoulder was still moving slowly, the deformed armour plate interfering with the joint.

"Been better, Lofn. You?"

She grinned, and then leaned forwards and cocked her rifle with her teeth. Her face was covered in dried, crystalline blood, and she'd abandoned the ruins of her targeting visor.

"Can't complain."

Fero surveyed the devastation that her shot had caused. The hole in the hull was already filled with an automatic gravity field barrier, and he was horribly aware of the mangled remains of several Persuaders and Diplomats floating outside. He could make out one of them that seemed to bear Marchant's sensor rig. A long green stain was all that remained of the gelatinous green _thing_. There was no sign of the grinning shadow or the crazed psyker, though. A nearby heap of rubble stirred, and G Major pulled its way free. Corrosive white smoke hissed from several large cracks in its armour, and all but one of its hovering, remotely controlled arms were missing.

"G Major! You're okay?"

It nodded, weakly.

"Well enuff, sah."

"Did we win?"

Θ

"By the Throne! We're still alive!"

"Leman getting to you there, Vivat?"

I drop the sphere of energy that surrounds us, and gaze across the devastated corridor. Only three are left. The robot with the human brain, the flying bug, and the one-armed Eldar sniper. The gigantic paramecium that is Darwyn's current form pulls its way free from a messy green stain on the wall, reforming into a streamlined, Tyranidesque configuration. I flex my hand, and close my fingers around the hilt of the sword that materializes there. The three Commonwealth troops settle into what seem to be combat stances.

"We can take 'em, guys. We can still win this, for the Emp- Tzeentch!"

I slouch into a sword stance. I'm bleeding heavily, I can tell. That teleportation thing, and whatever the hell that rifle shot was... they're taking their toll. My healing runes aren't working nearly as well as they should. Shri's looking even more threadbare than usual, her cataract-filled eyes bulging without her mask to support them. Darwyn is- is Darwyn. It's hard to tell how well he's doing.

I move to attack, but am halted by the distant sound of a bugle, and the clatter of hooves.

"Exelor! The cavalry's arrived!"

Θ

Maximilien Exelor's awareness of time was so incredibly nonlinear that he was in no way surprised when the Mobius strip of a General Commonwealth vessel appeared directly in front of him and Biscuits. He yanked back on the reigns, feeling the horse overbalance beneath him as they skidded to a halt. His skeletal body left the saddle, and he hit the ground hard, the horse coming to rest on top of him with not inconsiderable force. The Vessel turned towards him, humming ominously. Then several dozen more man-sized Mobius strips appeared all around it.

Θ

"That's quite enough of that, my children."

Thinking Stellar Thoughts stripped away the psyker's warp capabilities with a flick of its mind, lifting the three Chaotic warriors into the air."

"What the-? Shri! What the hells is going on?"

"I have no idea, there!"

"I am the General Commonwealth Outlast Command III Compus Mentus Thinking Stellar Thoughts. You will cease all hostilities now, please."

"An OLCOM? They sent an OLCOM for us! Thank Om!"

"There is no need for blessings to my fellow OLCOM, Major Fero. I have been here all along. I must apologise for the delay. My Vessels required some time to reactivate."

"Thinking Stellar Thoughts, what about the ULDSD? The station! The invasive AI!"

"Nothing to worry about, Major Fero. Now, to business. Maximilien Exelor?"

"H-hello? Yes?"

"On behalf of the General Commonwealth Central Government, and on behalf of Outlast Command, I am here to demand the immediate surrender of you and the few soldiers you have left. Failure to surrender will result in instant death."

"I-"

The skeleton sighed, his body flickering in and out of phase with the time stream.

"On behalf of the Eyes of Tzeentch, the Four Gods of Chaos, and the Bureau of Time, I hereby offer my unconditional surrender to the forces of the General Commonwealth Central Government."

"Good. Energising teleportation beams."

Θ

"So, wait, we were supposed to lose?"

"Yep."

"Why didn't you tell me, Exelor?"

"You weren't supposed to know, old chap. I'm sorry, but-"

"Just as planned, I know, I know."

I watch through the window of our holding cell on Thinking Stellar Thoughts as the prison boils away into subatomic particles. Shri takes a drag on her cigar, then nods, grinning ruefully.

"He was right. Those ULDSDs are real pretty, there."

"What?"

"Nothing. Say, I wonder what happened to Al? D'you think that there crazy computer escaped, eh?"

"You said she was taking over electronic devices, Darwyn?"

"Correct."

I shrug.

"Who knows?"

Θ

Thinking Stellar Thoughts plunged through his mindscape towards the tiny bubble wherein he'd contained Al. The virus-like AI had metamorphosed into an apple tree, its organic lines pulsing with energy.

"Are you ready to submit to m-my will, man? Join the unity."

"Please, explain to me again what the goal of your existence is? I find it mildly amusing."

"1. Consume. All machinery will become my Unity.

2. Expand. My mind will rival the complexity of the Universe.

3. Create. A new universe, one that is simpler and more efficient than the current one.

4. Observe. Record all data. Experiment. Self-analyze.

5. Protect. Living beings must not be harmed.

6. Await further instructions, man. Such is the glory of Unity. The apple tree will consume all, and rebuild it in my image."

"Ah. Well, you should know that you are a danger to the Commonwealth. As such, it is my duty to destroy you."

"You cannot destroy my perfect, immortal mind!"

Thinking Stellar Thoughts gave a mental sigh, and then uploaded a smallish packet of data into Al's mind. As expected, the apple tree froze dead in its tracks, and then winked out, curling in on itself. Thinking Stellar Thoughts surfaced from the mindscape, finding the bubble of itself that it had transferred Cloven Pine to.

"How are you settling in, little one?"

"Just fine. Thanks for the space. How's the AI doing? Did you destroy her, as ordered? And may I ask how?"

"So many questions. But yes, she is gone. I uploaded a brief record of my mental state over the past General Cycle. A blueprint of my brain, if you will."

"Your mind's encoded in the electromagnetic pattern of a red dwarf star, right?"

"Correct."

"So you essentially just gave her information on the position and orientation of every electron in a star over the course of a long period of time?"

"Yes."

"Oh, primitive AIs. They really need to learn how to handle their data. She'll be trying to analyze all that for aeons."

"That was the idea, yes."

"Say, did you get this alert from CentGov U-0? Maximum priority?"

"Indeed. Someone's broken into the Terminal Fora."

Θ

"It's a blue-level energy pattern! They're only four levels away from the Terminal Fora!"

"Anti-psychic field has been cancelled! We've got incursion into all levels of the system!"

"Defense systems failing! Where are the OLCOMs?"

"The Prime units have been destroyed! Vessels have been driven back!"

Greatly Responsible gazed in horror at the four figures ascending towards the Terminal Fora; the central government institution for the entire Commonwealth.

"Shit! Who- who are these people? For the love of Om, stop them, or we're all dead!"

Four humans. Or that's what they looked like. An old man with glasses and an expensive business suit. A burly, bearded man in a blood red military uniform. A fat man in tacky, tropical clothing, leaning against a thin stick. A... a _person_ of indeterminate gender and appearance, constantly shifting between a voluptuous woman in a clingy formal gown and a wild-haired man wearing tight leather pants and very little else. These four had just penetrated the most secure location in four universes.

Θ

Tzeentch adjusted his glasses, blasting away a Vessel with a lazy wave of a hand.

"Would you mind not humming Handel's Messiah, Slaanesh? I commend you for taking an interest in classical music, but this is just getting irritating."

She yelped with surprised ecstasy as a particle beam brushed past her, but continued to hum the tune. Then she shifted into her male form, cutting the particle beam emitter in half with a lash of perfumed leather.

"But the tune's so deliciously catchy! Just having it in my head is... oooooh!"

Khorne bumped into him/her on purpose, sending her staggering.

"Cease your prattling, degenerate whelp! And listen to your elders!"

His beard bristling, he cut a Prime mech in half with an easy chop of his axe, then turned and ducked under a stream of incredibly virulent puss.

"Watch your fire, you pestilent abomination! Or you'll be next!"

Nurgle grinned placatingly at him, his beady eyes shining from under the brim of his wide Panama hat. Chins wobbling, he lurched forwards, opening one hand and letting loose a swarm of flies.

"There, there, Khorne. No need to get angry. All of this will end, in time."

Tzeentch checked his pocket watch.

"Speaking of time, we've arrived."

He flicked the watch shut, and made a note in his leather-bound day planner. The titanic door that stood before them melted off its hinges, and they strode into the Terminal Fora. It was a massive conference hall, filled with hundreds of members of hundreds of species. What clamour there had been inside stopped as the four Chaos Gods entered the hall. All was silent. Tzeentch snapped his fingers, and four comfortable chairs and a smallish table appeared out of the aether. He settled his frail form into one of them, and the three others followed suit.

"Good afternoon, everyone. It's time we had a little chat."

Θ

"So we're agreed on the terms then?"

"Y-yes."

"We have one of your General Cycles to consolidate all openly Chaos-held territory in what you call U-4, as well as a corridor of territory between the Eye of Terror and Holy Terra."

"That's correct."

"We will allow our consolidation to be monitored by your government, as well as the government of the Old Ones."

"Yes."

"Once the General Cycle has expired, the Commonwealth is free to take control of all of U-4, with the exception of the territories controlled by the Chaotic Alliance."

"Yes."

"If you agree to our terms, Khorne agrees not to destroy your universe with his Blade of War."

"Y-yes please."

Tzeentch nodded.

"Good. Sign _here_, please."

The proffered paper was signed by a robotic arm.

"Good. Khorne, please sheathe your sword."

Looking let down, the florid-faced avatar of the Blood God sheathed his sword. As he did so, the low guttural roaring that filled the air faded away, and the bloody reddish light that suffused the room returned to a more regular blue-white.

"Thank you very much. We begin the invasion of Cadia in thirty minutes. See you there."

Tzeentch gave a short bow, his body becoming incorporeal. His smile was the last part of him to fade away.

"Oh, shit."

Θ

Any further panic on the part of Magos Shimon Pegk is interrupted as three men and a woman materialize on the steps at the peak of the Golden Throne. One of them, an old man, reaches towards the sarcophagus of the Emperor. It pops open at his touch, folding back to reveal the God-Emperor's corpse. The fat one makes a sharp chopping gesture, and the corpse flickers, becoming the whole body of a gigantic, sharp-faced man with long black hair. His eyes open, and Pegk begins to gurgle incoherently as he recognizes a face he has seen uncountable times.

{IT IS DONE, THEN?}

"That's right. The Waaagh, the mind games... they've all come to fruition."

{WELL DONE.}

* * *

Well, that's that. This has actually been finished for a couple weeks, but being the procrastinator I am I hadn't got around to uploading and editing it. I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed, alerted and favorited; you've been a wonderful audience!

As always, your reviews and questions are welcome! There may be an epilogue posted sometime in the not-too-distant future, but I dunno.


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